


in each place and forever

by shaekspeares



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Canon Compliant, Free! sequels are loosely followed, Friendship/Love, Gen, Light Angst, M/M, More of a celebration, Near Future, POV Tachibana Makoto, Rated T solely because Rin swears, The RinHaru experience as lived by innocent bystander Tachibana Makoto, This is not a tragic unrequited love story, Water Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25884745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaekspeares/pseuds/shaekspeares
Summary: “Rin and Haru are the sort of people you can’t help but fall in love with. It’s a shame they’ve only ever had eyes for each other.”“I wouldn’t call it a shame,” Makoto says, fondly, watching Haru glance away.Alternatively: Makoto, through the years, watching the whole beautiful mess unfold.
Relationships: Matsuoka Rin & Nanase Haruka & Tachibana Makoto, Matsuoka Rin & Tachibana Makoto, Matsuoka Rin/Nanase Haruka, Nanase Haruka & Tachibana Makoto
Comments: 29
Kudos: 163





	in each place and forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fencer_x](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencer_x/gifts), [sauntering_down](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sauntering_down/gifts).



> This fic would never have happened if it weren’t for my coincidental rediscovery of one of my most-loved soulmate-focused poems and an impromptu conversation with a new friend reminding me forcefully of an old and never attempted passion project of mine for this pairing. All roads lead to writing 30k epics for a long defunct fandom, as the saying goes. 
> 
> There is far too much I could say about Rin and Haru here; they’re one of the first pairings I can ever remember being heavily emotionally drawn to, and what must be like six years down the line I still hold them extremely dear. I’ve always wanted to read a RinHaru fic from an outside perspective, and when I first started daydreaming this fic it had chapters or segments from a whole host of characters’ perspectives, but Makoto is the undeniable tritagonist of Free and his voice just keep rising in volume when I started writing, so I let him do the talking for all of it. 
> 
> It did pain me to leave so much unshown and unsaid between Rin and Haru- to misquote Nagisa, they are immensely private in their intimacy, so even Makoto couldn’t be privy to most of their interactions. But I‘ve always been fascinated by what it must have been like for him to watch Haru and Rin from their first interactions onwards, and what he must have seen (and missed) throughout the years, so I’m glad I got this out of my system, messy and belated though it is.
> 
> Oh, final note- I’d like to dedicate this to fencer_x and sauntering_down, because their fics were both some of the first compelling works of fan writing my young eyes ever laid sight upon, and because even now they still stand the test of time as some as my favourite characterisations of the pairing. Thank you both for your service.

** i: incipit **

At times, Makoto thinks that it is fairly possible that he will never know anyone so well as he knows Nanase Haruka.

It’s something he’s thought for years, because it’s something he committed to years ago- knowing Haru, understanding Haru. Their friends, strangers, and anyone in-between often assume that it’s some sort of god-given gift of his, being able to translate the quirk of Haru’s brow into words, but there are years of practice behind it, trial and error. He’s observant, yes, but it’s active, with Haru; he observes, he tries, he listens. 

People often tell him, especially when they’re younger, before Makoto-and-Haru has become such a fact of life, that they don’t understand why he pours so much of his time and effort into Haru when he could be friends with anyone else. Beneath the dismissals he knows they’re not wrong- he’s always been fairly popular amongst his peers, and there are many of his classmates he gets along with, standing invitations to lunch or the movies he could have accepted across the years. Makoto only ever smiles, knows there’s no point explaining himself. 

He chose Haru a long time ago. That’s all there is to it.

He can’t explain, really, why he’s never once considered stopping being Haru’s friend. It’s a thankless job, sometimes, and later in life he reflects with some shame upon the years of suppressed resentment he’d endured, for the way it had made him lash out later. It’s just that Haru is special, in some unnameable way, and Makoto cherishes that he is special to Haru too.

Haru is special in ways that are obvious to everyone who meets him, touched by a certain quality that marks him as different from everyone around him. There is an intensity to him, locked behind uncaring eyes, and it shines radiant whenever he is in the water, moving through it like it was made to carry him; Makoto is helpless in his admiration. That he flees expectations and longs for normalcy does not stop Makoto from knowing that he will never achieve mediocrity. To have someone like that as his best friend- it’s impossible to stop living that way, once he’s had it. Haru is overwhelming like that.

The thing is- it’s mutual, their friendship. Maybe not at the very start, because Haru is fundamentally withdrawn and challenging and does not welcome change, but soon enough. Even young, even hesitant sometimes, Makoto always knows Haru cares, because Haru wouldn’t let him hang around him if he didn’t like him on some level. It’s not convenience, like so many people assume- Haru doesn’t  like that Makoto is helpful, doesn’t appreciate his assistance; he accepts him  despite these things. So despite the days where Makoto feels the strain of their odd friendship, he never doubts that he is Haru’s friend as much as Haru is his.

That their friendship is mutual does not mean they are on even footing, of course. But then Haru is Haru; and for years Makoto simply assumes that no one is on even footing with him.

For years before and after, they live in an equilibrium, sole points of import in each other’s life, and Makoto is happy that way, happy to be simply content, to have Haru quiet and contrary and abruptly, sporadically brilliant. It’s just that _after_ , he knows that that’s not all Haru can be. 

Matsuoka Rin bewilders Makoto immediately, just as he bewilders most everyone who meets him. He glows with an unusual exuberance, standing in front of the class, and unlike most transfer students he is neither shy nor standoffish, confident enthusiasm almost overwhelming as the class exchanges looks. When Makoto tries to engage with Haru about him Haru only blinks dully out of the window, so he drops it, but he does not feel any less curious for it. When Rin fixes his targets on Haru it is almost reassuringly normal of him.

Rin is neither the first nor the last person to be drawn to Haru’s recalcitrant magnetism. Everyone who meets him is at least a little fascinated by him, to Haru’s consistent dismay; Makoto can empathise. He’s quiet, and he’s closed off, and he swims and draws beautifully: it’s only natural that he draws attention. So when Rin’s vivid eyes start tracking Haru, head pillowed in his arms as he prods at him, it comes as no surprise.

He knows that all of them- Rin and Haru especially- think he knew, somehow. Could tell from the start. The truth is that he had no idea, at the time, of Rin’s significance. He remembers worrying for Rin, which is absurd in retrospect, because Rin seemed the type to take these things seriously, and Haru was not gentle in his rejection. 

Rin was- is- pushy, and tenacious, and attention-seeking, and they had known boys like him before, convinced they could drag Haru out of his shell, and Haru had always proved violently resistant to them, begrudging their familiarity, unmoved by their taunts or pleas. So when Rin starts chasing, Makoto keeps wanting to take him aside, issue some kind of warning, dispel the thunderclouds he can feel brewing overhead. He has, in his darker moments, wondered if he would have done differently, knowing what he does now. 

(He wouldn’t have. Rin and Haru at their best far outweigh Rin and Haru at their worst, and Makoto could never do that to them.)

He doesn’t notice when it shifts. Which frightens him, a little, because he knows Haru- can read Haru, even then, better than anyone. But while Rin pushes relentlessly Haru is cold, and dismissive, and resistant, and maybe it tricks Makoto into looking for the wrong patterns because he looks up one day during lunch and feels blindsided, watching Rin with his arm slung around Haru’s neck, chattering endlessly, watching Haru glower at the floor and not shake him off.

It’s not like he’s failed to notice Rin’s presence. He quite likes Rin, despite their opposite natures; he’s more than happy to be friends with him. It’s just that Rin has never seemed to hold any degree of permanence, before. The idea that he holds staying power in their lives is unsettling somehow.

Once he’s noticed it, he can’t stop noticing, which is a blessing and a curse. Because Rin pushes and Haru pulls away, over and over again, and it should lead nowhere but every time Rin pushes harder and Haru pulls just a fraction less. Rin soars by Haru with unfaltering enthusiasm and Haru resists until he doesn’t, tenses with annoyance and races past him, and when they burst out of the water Haru’s eyes gleam with satisfaction right until Rin laughs breathlessly and demands a rematch. Makoto watches them, and watches Haru, and doesn’t know what he’s seeing because he’s never seen it before.

Haru gives. Just a little, but Haru gives. Retorts snappily to Rin’s teasing where he would normally stay silent. Races past Rin where he would normally drift. Watches Rin, reluctantly, like he can’t help it, when Haru is permanently unmovable. 

Haru starts running back from the swimming club, when Haru hates to run, and Makoto wisely says nothing but he knows, as he cycles home alone, that if Haru is so obstinately silent about it it is because Rin did it first. 

What Makoto cannot fathom, more than anything, is that Rin is never satisfied with this. Haru gives an inch and Rin demands a mile. Makoto has never once pushed Haru, and he thinks maybe he wasn’t aware Haru could be pushed. He is not sure that he can be pushed, unless it is by Matsuoka Rin, eyes blazing with conviction as Haru stares determinedly at a wall. And either Rin is fully unawares of this power or he doesn’t  care, because Haru gives and Rin takes, and does not stop taking.

He tries to broach the subject, sometimes.

“Things have really changed since Rin got here, haven’t they?”

Haru firmly does not meet his eyes, staring at the water. Makoto tries again. 

“I’m glad we’re doing new things together.”

This makes Haru look up, expression somewhere between distant and petulant. “I don’t like new things.”

“Not at all?” Makoto asks, on more familiar footing. “What about the new Loosey-kun movie?”

“That’s different,” Haru says, looking away again. “It’s just a new version of an old thing.”

“Swimming in a relay is just a new version of swimming,” Makoto counters, testing the waters. This relay idea of Rin’s has proven their biggest point of contention thus far, and he’s unsure if he believes even Rin capable of budging Haru on the subject. 

Then again, Rin had certainly sold Makoto on it, despite his water-related anxieties.

“I’m not swimming in a relay,” Haru says, with a flash of irritation. “I only swim free.”

“Rin seems to-“

“I’m not swimming for him,” Haru interrupts, combatively. It’s funny; even without Rin around he sounds like he’s talking to him. Makoto holds his palms up placatingly.

“It sounds nice, is all.”

It takes Haru a while to respond, blue eyes gone warily curious. “You want to swim in the relay?”

“I just like the idea,” Makoto reassures, quickly. “It sounds nice. Swimming with your friends.”

Haru just huffs, turns his face. “He’s too sentimental.”

This makes Makoto laugh, and he drops the subject.

He’s not sure how he feels about it, though. Haru changing. Haru has always been staunchly unchanging, and it’s thrilling in a weird way to watch him morph a little- the spark of competition in his eye, the way his lips struggle against a smile, above all the way he swims. Haru has always swum beautifully, but when he and Rin race there’s something more to it, not serene but powerful, breath-stopping. Makoto doesn’t know how to describe it, then, only knows it fills him with awe, and maybe a prickle of jealousy.

He’s a good swimmer, but he doesn’t swim like that. 

He is not by nature the jealous type. He’s never been jealous of anyone before, not that he knows, but sometimes it makes his stomach ache, in a hot bad sort of way, when he watches them. He tries to keep it suppressed, but he’s twelve, and unused to this kind of turbulence, and it’s hard finding himself suddenly unsure of his own place in the world. He’s always grounded Haru, but sometimes it feels like Haru is entirely ungrounded, nowadays, caught in Rin’s currents. 

He doesn’t know Rin like he knows Haru, so he is never entirely sure what he wants. If Haru is being dragged along, it seems clear that Rin too is caught on Haru somehow, but where Haru resists Rin actively takes the plunge, seems to commit enthusiastically to Haru’s pull. It’s not clear to Makoto if this is done in ignorance of or despite the troubled waters below; he only registers later that it may well have been _because_. 

Makoto envies Rin his pull, yes. He tries not to, but he is twelve and slightly cast adrift, and sometimes a mean little voice in his head demands to know why Haru cares more about outpacing Rin than he ever seemed to care about staying level with Makoto. On some days, almost more shamefully, he is jealous of  _Haru_ \- which he has always managed to avoid, despite his best friend’s natural aptitudes. It makes sense that Rin, whirlwind of passions that he is, could only ever have eyes for Haru, but sometimes it stings, catching his hasty greeting as he makes a beeline for Haru, eyes on the prize. 

Most days, though, he is grateful for Rin. Because Rin is his friend, and Rin makes him laugh, and Rin has made his life ten times more colourful; because Rin has showed them all something new, despite his passionate promises to Haru alone, because Rin has brought them together to share something exciting and special. 

Sometimes he feels like he’s started to watch Rin like he watches Haru, without ever understanding him half so well. 

“Man, I was so worried,” Rin breathes, that day at the bus stop, cheeks still coloured from the excitement as they walk. Distantly, it reassures Makoto, that Rin was scared but is no longer, because if Rin’s boundless confidence has been restored then Haru should be fine too. 

“I’m sure Haru-chan will be fine,” Makoto echoes, aiming for reassuring, though he still feels sick with worry himself. He’s so lost in thought it takes him a second to realise Rin has stopped, gaze locked squarely with his. 

“I wasn’t talking about him,” Rin says, like this should have been obvious. He’s frowning. “I was talking about you.”

Makoto stops, stares, tries to understand. “Me?”

“You were shaking,” Rin affirms, critical, pointing at his hands. “The whole time we were carrying him. I thought you were going to pass out.”

His breath feels caught in his throat; he looks down at his hands. “I…”

“You’re scared, right?” Rin asks, and Makoto feels acute sympathy for Haru, all of a sudden, for usually being the one he subjects to this sort of scrutiny. He flushes, unsure, but Rin presses on: “You’re scared of the water. So that was really brave, helping him just then.”

“N-no,” Makoto starts, “I just- I mean, Haru-chan could have gotten hurt, I had to…”

Rin considers him almost gravely, then nods like he’s made up his mind. “You’re a really good friend, you know. Haru’s super ungrateful.”

He protests, then, defends Haru’s good name, but for the rest of the day there is something warm and happy in his chest amidst the leftover anxiety, and afterwards he is much quicker to support Rin’s initiatives to Haru, feels less like his loyalties are a given. 

(Even years later, sometimes, he catches Rin glancing towards him, when the waters get rough. Makoto doesn’t think you can stop being friends with someone like that.)

Makoto suspects long before Haru does that Rin is planning on going. 

In a way, he has always expected this day to come; he’s just forgotten, with time, that he was expecting it. Rin is not like Makoto, rooted docilely, or Haru, firmly fixed; he burst into Iwatobi to chase a dream and has always been liable to vanish just as quickly. Having predicted this eventuality gives Makoto no satisfaction. 

The moment he understands where things are headed, he feels what can only be described as despair. Because they’re losing Rin, for one, who is Makoto’s best friend besides Haru, and because he doesn’t know what will happen once he’s gone. It feels incredibly unfair, that Rin could have disrupted their status quo so entirely only to disappear again in what feels like no time. And he is frightened, he realises- worried and afraid, because he can endure it, the return to normalcy, or what once passed for it, but he doesn’t know if Haru will. It’s ironic that it is once again Rin’s fault that Makoto’s presumptions are out of the window.

He can’t bring himself to press the issue. He wants to believe that what they have will last.

They win their relay, a shimmering moment of joy, the water parting for Makoto like maybe it loves him too, when he’s part of this team, and he listens to Nagisa’s ecstatic exclamations and Rin’s triumphant giddy laughter and feels happier than he can ever remember being. Rin’s mother takes the picture, eyes shimmering, and Makoto places a hand on Haru’s back and feels the way he shifts when Rin slings an arm around his neck and reels him in, shoulder to chest. Haru doesn’t smile for the picture, but his eyes shimmer irrepressibly for several minutes after the relay, and Makoto doesn’t mind that he’s not alone in being able to read that, laughing at the way Haru scowls when Rin crows his triumph,  _I told you so, didn’t I, Haru, I told you _echoing merrily through the changing rooms.

He has the unfortunate experience of watching Rin properly break the news, what feels like no time later. Rin is a brittle mix of bravado and conviction, half posturing fragility and half unmovable certainty. It eludes people sometimes how steely Rin is beneath the emotional highs and lows. Makoto, though, can’t help but watch Haru for a reaction, which means he has the displeasure of seeing his eyes flash wide and then shutter, brows knitting together with something like betrayal, naked in its novelty.

With Haru and Rin nothing is ever kept short and simple, but amidst the back and forth, Makoto only recalls one thing- Haru’s voice, demanding like Haru never is, saying: “You’re  _leaving_?”

**ii. troubled waters**

To say that things go back to the way they were would be a lie.

Traces of Rin remain everywhere, in those first months. In the picture on Makoto’s bedside table, in the postcard he gets from Sydney, in the relay team they build, in the water. For a while it feels like he’s still there, somehow, like they haven’t quite come to terms with his leaving.

He never knows quite what happened, the day Rin and Haru raced. All he knows is that the next morning the words die in his throat at the sight of Haru, because he can’t read him. There is nothing in his expression; the absence of feeling.

Makoto is often frightened, but that morning he is scared.

Haru answers no questions until lunch break, the four of them sat around the table, Makoto’s chest knotted with anxiety as he watches him, and then he says: “I’m not swimming anymore.”

There is worse than watching your person blossom for someone else, Makoto realises. It’s watching them blossom and then retreat.

For all intents and purposes, the next weeks- months- years- play out like they would have, if they’d never met Rin. It’s just the two of them, again, with Asahi gone and Ikuya betrayed. Makoto drags an apathetic Haru out of the bathtub in the mornings, talks at him for most of the day, watches him drift across the pool. Haru talks to no one else, cares only about the water, and sometimes demonstrates that it matters to him that they are friends. Makoto takes it all gamely, because Haru is his best friend, because he did this once and he can do it again, and he thinks maybe they’re better like this, in the long run.

He tries, across the years, to pique Haru’s interest in other things. Never competitive swimming, because he knows Haru too well- knows when he’s made his mind up for good- but other things: art, music, aquatic animals. Haru only ever reacts with vague irritation, and sometimes Makoto forgets that there’d been a time where getting Haru to willingly forgo his routine seemed possible at all. 

Some days he can’t help resentment from seeping into him as he watches Haru disengage from yet another conversation. It is so like Rin, to shatter some unnameable wall and leave Makoto with the pieces, to make Haru cautiously open to something new and then withdraw forever. And for what? Haru is the same now as he was before Rin, only hurt in some unspeakable way, somewhere deep down where Makoto can’t hope to reach. 

Oftentimes he misses Rin. He hadn’t realised until he’d left how much of a change it made, to have someone else between them, someone who answered Makoto’s chattering and forced conversation out of Haru, someone who pried open their comfortable oyster and forced the sea in, terrible though the waves can be. 

He writes, sometimes. Especially earlier. He hasn’t seen Rin since he left, and Rin only wrote about twice before going silent, but he’s still at that school, to the best of Makoto’s knowledge, and so he writes, a handful of letters, English address carefully printed on the back. He never hears anything back, but the letters don’t get returned, so he supposes Rin gets them, wherever he is. Whoever he is.

He imagines Rin, sometimes, their age: tall and red-haired and grinning, forever dragging people along. He can’t imagine how brightly he must shine, grown as they are. Wonders if he ever thinks about them, about Haru. 

He envisages nothing but repetition, when he thinks about the future, and it is a comfort- Makoto and Haru, repeating routines, familiarity in their daily lives.

Somehow, though, when Rin comes back, beneath the shock and the disbelief, his first coherent though is: “ _About time_. ” 

As children, they’d known each other for less than a year. Him, Rin, Haru, Nagisa, tied together by fate, or maybe just Rin’s undying optimism. He looks back upon those times with the utmost fondness, but he remembers, too, the hot unpleasant desperation that prickled at him sometimes, watching them, feeling bereft of something shared between them. Older he recognises it as magnetism, charisma; individually, they’d drawn endless attention, but together, they’d held one another’s, almost to the exclusion of the outside world. 

A dance, he thinks, recalling their swimming. Or a chase. A partnered event, at any rate, even in the relays, where their victory had always been a question of Haru and Rin’s times above all else. 

When Rin returns from Australia, that charged feeling- like their worlds have narrowed down to each other- returns tenfold, almost tangible now, electric with emotion. Makoto watches Rin emerge from the shadows like a predator, and it’s like he and Nagisa aren’t even there; Haru’s gaze is fixed ahead, and Rin speaks to him alone.

“Since when is Rin so scary?” Nagisa demands, voice high as they leave the building, and Makoto doesn’t know how to say that Rin has always scared him, but now the threat seems overt.

This time he knows what to look for, and the change in Haru is immediate.

Rin has changed, and yet he has not. Gone is the joy and enthusiasm of old, replaced by violent disdain- in his sneering anger Makoto can find no trace of the boy who’d once proclaimed his dreams of swimming in a pool of cherry blossoms without a hint of shame. But the fierce competitiveness, the single-minded drive, the way he is incessantly, relentlessly seeking to break skin- this Makoto recognises, albeit with a sour taste in his mouth. 

Rin is still Rin; it is impossible to look away from him. He is eye-catching and intense and powers through the water like he was born for it, and from the way he strides uncaringly past the awed bystanders whenever he leaves the pool he still doesn’t care what other people think about him. 

He cares what Haru thinks about him. This much has not changed either.

Makoto is meant to be the level-headed one, in their group, but Rin gets to him, too. He can’t resist his pull any better than the other two- can’t resist reaching out, meddling, trying to mend bridges that neither Rin nor Haru appear to want to mend. This is  _Rin_ , and though he can barely decide how he feels about his return some part of him protests that they have Rin back, and that somewhere beneath his cold eyes that beaming boy must still exist, can still be reached.

Rin does not want to be reached. Rin strides back into their lives in Samezuka stripes tossing a trophy at their feet and hooks a line right back into Haru without a glance in anyone else’s direction.

It is worse the second time around. Because Haru has spent years now the way he’d been before, and Makoto had thought- had hoped- he doesn’t know, that maybe Haru was over it, that maybe Haru really had reverted to who he was pulled free of Rin’s hold. And maybe Haru had been, but every time their paths cross, it feels like the air stills around them, Haru’s eyes flashing and Rin’s fists clenched, and Makoto starts to suspect neither of them ever actually resurfaced back then.

He doesn’t hear what Rin says, when he wins their race. Just sees Haru stood there, head bowed, trails of water running slowly down him, and it is the first time the water has ever seemed dead around him. Makoto aches, then burns.

“He wants to swim with you!” he hears himself shout, just this side of angry, wishing Rin would just look at him, wishing Rin would just look at  Haru. 

Rin had  seen Haru back then, in ways that Makoto hadn’t, and he doesn’t, anymore, and he’s not allowed to do that, goddamnit, not when it’s because of him that there’s something else to see there. 

For the team had been  _Rin_ ’s motto, Rin dragging them out of their predestined paths, or maybe Rin dragging Haru into his, but Rin nonetheless, and Makoto understands now that this was always going to happen, in this way- that it could never be just him and Haru living contentedly, that somewhere at his core Haru yearns for a purpose. Maybe it’s a purpose that has always laid dormant, or maybe it exists to mirror Rin’s: either way, it is theirs, and no one else’s, and it hurts, actually, that he knows he can never fulfil that role, no matter what he does, no matter if he deserves to. 

If he has to watch- if he has to accept that in this at least he will only ever watch from the outside, then he refuses that it end this way. He is powerless to change it, most likely, but there is a steady heat in his chest that refuses to simmer down. 

When they swim in the relay preliminaries Rin is watching, and the irony does not elude them. He watches Haru glide seamlessly through the water, and then he watches Rin watch Haru, the way his knuckles go white against the railing, the look in his eyes.

Rin looks like Haru feels, these days. Hook sunk so deep into his gut that he’s left it to fester.

He remembers finals in flashes. 

Rin, too weak to raise himself out of the pool; Gou’s muffled gasp, the lead in his own stomach. Haru, moving with intent like he never does out of the water, racing out of the room.

Rin hunched over Haru, hands fisted into his shirt, sobbing like his heart was breaking, Haru sat talking to him in the softest of voices, looking at him like something the tide had washed back home.

He doesn’t even remember his own lap. 

Haru swims like he’s one with the water, like it’s effortless, like it carries him. Rin swims like he’s determined to make the water his own, self-assured and challenging, waves lapping at him admiringly as he moves. In rapid succession they are seamless; he thinks Rin’s fingers touch the wall in the exact moment Haru dives, without Haru even looking. 

When Haru emerges from the water his chest rises and falls four times, brows furrowed with effort, and Makoto thrums with joy as he extends a hand, forgives Rin all of his mistakes, because he had forgotten how good it feels to see Haru care, to see him try, to see him succeed. Their eyes lock green on blue as Nagisa cries and Haru smiles, for the first time in years, quick and fond, and Makoto could cry if he wasn’t who he is, waiting steadfastly for Haru to join them.

Rin slams into Haru full-body, Haru’s eyes going wide and crystal-clear for half a second before Nagisa launches himself onto them, and it’s hard to miss all tangled up like they are, the way Rin’s voice breaks on Haru’s name, the way Haru inhales when it does.

_You showed me a sight I’ve never seen before_ , Rin chokes out, all hitching romanticism, and they can’t see each other’s faces but Makoto prays fiercely that he knows what it means when Haru stills, when his shoulders relax, when he voices his agreement so gently. 

Haru is still smiling faintly when they separate, eyes on Rin as he exclaims his thanks to the two of them, and Makoto feels all of twelve years old, bursting into slightly hysterical laughter, part of something that matters, just a little adjacent to the stars of the show.

Months later Rin asks him if he hates him, for what he did. Makoto only shakes his head.

“Why not?” Rin bursts out, always unable to restrain his questions, eyes flashing masochistically. “After everything I did to y- after everything I did to him?”

It’s typical of Rin, to press right into the uncomfortable meat of the issue, refusing to pretend that this could ever have been about something other than Haru. Makoto appreciates it.

“Before I met you,” Makoto says, after a moment’s consideration, “I’d never seen Haru smile at a person before.”

Rin looks stricken, throat working as he looks away, but his fists clench and he drags his gaze back upwards, insistent. 

“I’m sure you saw him do a lot of things he’d never done before me.”

“Yes,” Makoto concedes. “And for a while when you were gone I thought that was unforgivably careless of you- to make him feel things fully and then leave him to suffer through them alone.”

Rin flinches, but he takes this better than his previous revelation, which is oddly typical of him, Makoto thinks- he endures harshness a lot more easily than gentleness. 

“I never- he could feel things before. He just didn’t want to.”

“So you made him want to, then,” Makoto rectifies, which makes Rin flinch harder. “Rin. When you came back I had no idea what to do. And when you told him you’d never swim with him again-“

“I know,” Rin says, muffled, burying his head in his arms. “I know. I thought you were going to hit me.”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“I deserved it,” Rin replies, morose. One red eye peers out at him, tired. “I wish you’d just hit me, Makoto.”

“It’d make you feel better,” Makoto confirms, and does not move. Rin snorts at that, drags a hand through his hair.

“Ouch. Yeah. Fair enough.”

“Haru is my best friend,” Makoto says, after a moment. “For most of our lives we’ve really only had each other. But he’s never really been mine. He’s too free-spirited.” 

He pauses, smiles wryly. “With you, though- I think it’s kind of different.”

“Are you crazy?” Rin manages, emerging from his hunch, cheeks flaming. “Haru is no more mine than the damn water is. All I ever do is try to get a good hold on the guy.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Makoto hums, thoughtful. “You don’t want to pin him down anywhere. You just want him to chase after you.”

“Wh- I do not,” Rin protests, scarlet now, shooting an alarmed glance inwards. When Makoto only levels a look at him he looks away, fists clenching against the railing.

“…He hates doing it, anyways.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Makoto huffs, a little amused despite himself. Then he sobers, shakes his head. “I never would have hit you for what you did. I don’t think there’s a lot you could do to get me to want to.”

He collects his thoughts, meets Rin’s eyes. “I’d rather see Haru hurt sometimes than unfeeling, Rin. And he feels everything so much more vividly when he’s around you.”

“That’s not-“

“Always a good thing, I know. I hate to see him hurt. You know that; I know you think I indulge him too much.”

Rin doesn’t deny this, setting his jaw a little, and Makoto thinks about how odd it is to say these things out loud. “I forgave you that day after the relay, you know. When I saw Haru. He smiled when he saw us there.”

He shakes his head. “He wasn’t really smiling at us, though. He was smiling because of what we were doing, because we’d won, because we’d done it together. I hadn’t seen him smile in almost a year.”

“All that from a smile,” Rin says, after a beat, a little gruffly. Cast as he is in the fading red of the sun, he’s hard to look at straight-on. 

Makoto only offers a smile of his own, conscious of their friends inside, of Haru doubtless watching the balcony with unnerving focus. “I’m really glad you came back.”

And this, finally, makes Rin’s brow smooth, his eyes brightening with self-conscious fondness as he looks up, one sharp tooth pressed to the corner of his lip. “Yeah. Me too.”

** iii. surface break **

Hating either of them has never been a possibility. It’s not that Makoto is blind to their many flaws- hell, he’s probably best suited to recognising them; he understands why someone might hate them. Being talented the way Rin and Haru are means people are always expecting the other shoe to drop, and neither of them are exactly beyond reproach. Haru is unapproachable to the point of being flat-out cold, dismissive and detached at the worst of times; Rin is aggressive and fickle, somehow simultaneously needy and standoffish. They are the both of them horrendously stubborn and temperamental, and almost impossible to convince that they are wrong. 

And yet, and yet. Every single person he’s known to dislike them does so from a place of confusion, a broken pedestal, an emotional misstep. Mikoshiba the elder, exasperated by Rin’s antics. Ikuya, wounded by Haru’s dismissal. Sousuke, resentful of his place in Rin’s life. Haru and Rin themselves, caught up in a whirlwind of accusations and barbed competition, licking their wounds only to come running right back to each other. 

In the end the both of them shine too brightly for that sort of thing.

It’s not always easy, in the aftermath, but for the most part it isn’t hard. Rin is back, and yet not quite; from that moment at the relay Makoto stops holding his breath, trusts that though their routine has been firmly destroyed once more he no longer needs to worry that their new everyday will be worse off for it.

Haru is a little put-off, he thinks, by the fact that the shift is not complete- that Rin does not immediately join Iwatobi and slot back into their lives just like the Rin he used to be. He’s not sure if Haru has taken the relative familiarity of Rin on that final day as a sign of his return to form, but there is something less guarded in his gaze now, like he feels vindicated somehow. Which is good, for all of their sakes, but he worries that Haru expects too much, maybe, is still reluctant to let go of the way things were.

For Makoto that Rin stays in Samezuka is a disappointment but a relief. Rin has changed- it wouldn’t do to pretend otherwise. And in a way it’s good for there to be some space between him and Haru, at least for now, because contrary to what he suspects Haru secretly believes, relays are not factually magical, even though they feel it. 

“It was an important first step, Haru-chan,” Makoto explains, careful, as they walk to school. “But you need to be patient with each other.”

“Drop the -chan,” Haru says, reflexive, frowning at nothing in particular before he finally speaks again. “ Rin’s never been patient before.”

“Things are different now,” Makoto says, patiently, gazing at the shifting clouds. “You’ve both changed.”

“I haven’t changed,” Haru refutes, meeting his eyes now. “And neither has he.”

“Haru…”

“He hasn’t,” Haru shrugs, factual. “He’s always been just like this.”

And maybe he’s right, in some profound way that Makoto can’t hope to understand, so he drops it.

Time passes; school resumes, and they see Rin often enough that some days Makoto nearly forgets he ever left. He’s missed Rin- the way he throws his head back when he laughs, the way he slings his arms around the back of people’s chairs, the way he likes to spin around to face people as he walks- and it’s good to see him properly, to watch Haru fend him off, to tease at his temper when he remembers how to. Rin has always burned so bright, and now the heat has returned to his cold star, warm and vibrant and familiar. 

“Back me up on this,” Rin will say, oftentimes, to whoever he’s formed an alliance with, usually against Haru, and thus often to Makoto: “A mackerel-based diet is super fucking unhealthy, right?”

“Mackerel is good for you,” replies Haru, mutinous, and Makoto fights a laugh, feigns innocence.

“Well, it’s not exactly balanced…”

“It’s not balanced at all!” Rin exclaims, seizing the point and jabbing an accusatory finger in Haru’s face as he shoves him back. “Honestly, it’s like you want to get scurvy or something!”

“I’m fine.”

“Maybe if you actually ate some meat once in a while there wouldn’t be half a second between our 500 meters right,” Rin leers, changing tack, and Haru’s gaze snaps immediately to him, eyes narrowing.

“It’s not half a second.”

“Feels like it.”

Haru’s expression tightens, then he looks away, impassive again. “If your diet’s so wonderful you ought to be faster than that.”

Rin sputters, shifting to resume his offensive, and Makoto catches the gleam of satisfaction in Haru’s eyes with a knowing smile. 

Things are awkward with Haru and Rin for far longer than they are with anyone else, which is not surprising. Rin had been the one to set this all- their friendships- into motion, but Haru had always been at the centre of that, and in all of the hurt and sadness of Rin’s departure to Australia and subsequent return, they had most hurt themselves and each other.

It makes them both walk on eggshells around each other, which neither of them are suited to. Rin is tentative, pushiness curbed by tenuous guilt, and he is often withdrawn where he would normally take centre stage, insecurity weighing visibly on him. Haru is more patient with him than he has ever been with anyone, gives easily where he would normally resist, like he can retroactively make up for his childhood cold shoulder, but he doesn’t know how to handle him with kid gloves anymore now than he did then. Between the two of them they are a fine mess of miscommunications and frustrations and unspoken wants.

They argue, though, irresistibly. It could just be nostalgia, but he feels like he’d forgotten how much they used to argue.

Most of the time it’s bickering. Rin prods, Haru bristles, and sometimes the balance shifts, reverses. Makoto has made a habit of learning Haru’s every like and dislike, but with Rin it’s like he instinctively knows to take the exact opposite choice- to argue for hot over cold soba, for red over blue, for dogs over cats. They share the same passions from none of the same perspectives, more and less alike than anyone else in their lives.

They argue, though, too. It panics Rei and amuses Nagisa and annoys Gou, and Makoto has no idea what to do with it, because he and Haru never argue; never have anything to argue about. Haru’s not the arguing type, in his mind, too passive, too untouchable, but this is Rin, and even when Haru shuts down he sulks, tangibly, his own version of a tantrum. 

It is never clear to anyone except them what they are arguing about; they keep all of their fights behind closed doors. Usually the patterns repeat themselves, though- Haru seeking freedom, Rin seeking commitment, both of them seeking honesty without wanting to provide it themselves.

Sometimes, in the readjustment period, Makoto worries that it is unhealthy, maybe. The bickering he has always understood for what it is- that same eternal dance of theirs, pushing and pulling, some untranslatable pleasure in the back and forth. The arguing, though- he can tell neither of them enjoy it, especially in the early days, both silently fearing the day where they go too far, destroy their newfound equilibrium.

He goes to see Haru one weekend and finds him stewing in the bathtub, and before Makoto can even speak he’s started talking unprompted, voice laced with frustration.

“It’s not like I want to fight with him.”

Makoto doesn’t ask who. “You don’t.”

“He’s wrong,” Haru says, staring down at the water like he can make it give him answers. “I’m not like him. He should stop trying to force it.”

“How do you mean?”

“He asks too much,” Haru says, irritable as their eyes meet. “I just want to swim with him. I don’t want to do anything more.”

“I don’t think he wants to force your hand,” Makoto tries, thinking of all the times what Haru wants has evolved to match Rin. “He just wants to share what he cares about with you.”

This makes Haru’s frown deepen abruptly, and he sits up to pull the plug, water rushing down the drain. “Don’t make it sound so dramatic.”

Things are almost always dramatic when it comes to Rin and Haru. Makoto does not voice this.

He knows, though- and this is what makes him hold his tongue, even at the start, when it makes his stomach flip uneasily to watch Haru brood- that they fight because they care. They are both too concerned with going too far to intend to fight the way they do- in Rin’s case it’s almost visible, whenever he sees himself cross some arbitrary threshold. 

The thing is- Makoto doesn’t know how to voice this, if he ever wanted to, but it’s because Rin has changed, in a way, that things have settled the way they have. Because they used to have the exact same chafing spots, aged twelve, except Rin back then was fully confident that he was right, and that he would make Haru see it too, and that any opposition he was met with was just Haru being difficult. Rin now, for all that he acts the same way, no longer trusts this instinct, holds back, second guesses, misinterprets. 

It unsettles Haru, this shift; Makoto can tell. Maybe when they had just met Rin, all of those years ago, he would have been quite happy for Rin to struggle to read his moods, for Rin to read rejection into his silences, but their lives have long changed tracks since then. In a way he thinks Haru expects the boundless confidence, for Rin to assume and infer whatever he likes, and doesn’t quite know how to react when he doesn’t. It skews their balance.

“Ugh,” Nagisa sighs, one day, watching Rin hang over his lane to grin toothily at Haru, waves lapping lazily at the both of them. “Why can’t they always be like this?”

“It’s not that simple,” Rei reproaches, crossing his arms. “They share a very tempestuous history.”

“So?” Nagisa counters, jutting his lip out challengingly. “Rin-chan was a dick to us too, and we’re all good now!”

“You know that’s different,” Makoto says, shaking his head, and Nagisa sags, put out.

“I know, I know. It’s just so dumb.”

“What’s dumb?” Rin asks, amused, towelling his hair as he approaches with Haru in tow. Makoto smooths his face innocently, but he’s overerestimated Nagisa’s tolerance for everyone’s silence on the matter, because he perks up immediately, cheeks puffing as he points an accusing finger at them.

“You two! Since you like each other best, you should get along, shouldn’t you?”

“Hah?” Rin says, flabbergasted, as Haru’s eyes widen and Rei sputters.

“ _Nagisa!_ ”

Makoto sometimes wonders if he ought to take a page out of Nagisa’s book. 

Naturally, all of his years of pacifism come back to bite him in the ass. 

People make their assumptions, about the way he and Haru work. Mostly they’re wrong. Makoto doesn’t bite his tongue for fear of losing Haru’s friendship- he’s just not a confrontational person, and they rarely have anything to fight about. That Haru is difficult has never made him angry, and for all that he can irritate Haru the same is true in reverse.

Rin says that Makoto is too lenient, with Haru, too much of a pushover. Which isn’t true, not really. What he suspects Rin means, though, beneath the bluster, is that in their own way Makoto and Haru are just as dysfunctional as Rin and Haru. It sounds laughably untrue, and makes some unfamiliar part of Makoto prickle in offence whenever he catches Rin looking at him in a certain way, but he thinks deep-down that it must be true. Even as children Rin’s bouts of perceptiveness had put him ill at ease.

(“Why’d you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Baby him,” Rin had retorted, hands on his hips. “He ought to look after himself!”

It hadn't been the first time someone had tried to tell Makoto not to take on such a burden, but it had caught him off guard, glancing back at Haru where he glared at the floor. “I don’t- I’m not babying Haru-chan. I don’t mind being helpful.”

“Yeah, duh,” Rin had huffed, dropping his hands. “You love being helpful. That’s why he puts up with it.”)

This accusation, delivered as fact, has stuck with Makoto over the years. He has never regarded taking care of Haru as a burden, but certainly he feels like the one making the effort in their friendship. It perturbs him to imagine that his faithful attentions are endured by  Haru as a concession to their friendship.

So maybe their perfect harmony is less perfect than it might appear. Maybe Makoto swallows frustrations and reproaches and sometimes feels like if he walked into the sea Haru would blink and move on. Maybe he’s not as good for Haru as everyone thinks he is, keeping him complacent, expecting too little from him. It’s just that- overall, they’re good together. It never occurs to him to disrupt their tranquil routine for minor qualms.

He thinks in part the issue is that he doesn’t know how to talk to Haru about these things. If their relationship is more comfortable and stable than Rin and Haru’s could ever hope to be, it is so at a cost. He hadn’t realised it until Rin came back. The push and pull of their clashes creates momentum, moves them along, washes debris to the shore. With Makoto and Haru things have always been placid. Rin would call them stagnant.

As it turns out, of course, they are perfectly capable of fighting. 

He thinks it may be the worst feeling in the world, second only to drowning, to watch Haru’s expression shift into betrayed incomprehension, to know that he put that look on his face. Haru  doesn’t _understand_ , and Makoto feels more like Rin than he has ever felt in his life. He has never asked anything of Haru, not like this- never expected and demonstrated his expectation, never stood his ground and forced his hand.Haru is looking at him like he doesn’t recognise him, and Makoto is abruptly exhausted, gone raw, because how is that fair? How is it fair that he can’t ask this one thing of him? How is it fair that he gives and gives and gives and this one time that he holds firm, Haru can react like he’s the one this is hurting?

They are _leaving Iwatobi_. And it scares him too, of course it scares him- he should be the one that’s scared, not Haru, because Haru is attached to routine more than he is attached to Iwatobi, but Makoto’s heart feels lodged somewhere in these streets, in his siblings’ laughter, in the lapping of the pool water, in the shade of Haru’s porch. For all that things have changed across the years, he has always had this: home, and Haru, and stability, and now they have lives to lead that may not include any of that. So Makoto is terrified, fine, Makoto feels his lungs restrict with anxiety as he counts the days to their graduation, but they have no choice, do they? They’re growing up. They can’t stop time.

It’s his own fault for misreading things, assuming that the silent shadow of Haru’s struggle meant he was coming to terms with this. He knows Haru is stubborn; he knows Haru hates change. He knows that Haru chooses not to care when life is trying to force him to. 

He’s not sorry for having pushed, he finds, despite the nausea, despite his hitching breaths. He’s sorry for having pushed too late, maybe- for having let Haru pretend that this wasn’t going to happen one way or another. He just- he wishes he hadn’t needed to do the pushing. Or he wishes that Haru hadn’t expected him to let it slide.

He feels profoundly alone, in the aftermath. There is no one he can talk to about this. No one to sort through his thoughts and tell him what he did right and wrong. 

“Haru has his own life, Makoto,” his mother had said, gentle but firm, when he’d sent in his applications.“He’ll figure it out.”

He thinks he’d acquiesced, then, because he hadn’t known how to say that this was both true and not, that taking these steps towards adulthood felt like a betrayal somehow, that trepidation was rendering him simultaneously apologetic and remorseless. 

He doesn’t know how to fight with Haru. Has no experience with this fundamental of a disconnect. He’d acted out of desperation, out of his depth, and it has done nothing but fracture their unbreakable bond. 

He lets himself stew in profound misery, and then he gets a grip, because this is not about him, or his feelings, or even their friendship. Whether or not Haru will ever forgive him for it is besides the point- Makoto refuses to let him ignore his future any longer.

In hindsight he sees his mistakes clearly. Trying to reach Haru like that had been doomed to failure from the start; he’s never done things that way before, and there was no reason to think Haru would respond to it out of the blue. He’d thought, subconsciously, that maybe his acting out would make Haru realise the gravity of the situation, but he realises now that what he’d actually been doing was trying to make someone else’s tactics work for him- tactics that had only ever worked on Haru in the first place because of the person using them. 

Makoto is not that person, but he has his phone number saved.

“You what?” is Rin’s immediate response, so very predictable that Makoto almost laughs, tinted with exhaustion and nerves. 

“You have to talk to Haru,” Makoto reiterates, instead, free hand bunched in his lap. “To make him want a future.”

Rin makes a noise of disbelief, voice catching between suspicion and concern.

“Makoto- I mean, you can’t be serious. You realise who you’re talking to, right? I’m the last person in the world Haru ever listens to.”

“You’re the only person he listens to,” Makoto counters, but Rin doesn’t let him finish, harsh laughter cutting him off mid-sentence.

“The hell I am. Look, I tried, all right? I’ve tried a _lot_. Actually, I’ve probably been trying since the day I met the asshole, but he’s made it crystal clear that he doesn’t care.”

His voice quietens a little, less annoyed and more frustrated. “He told me flat-out, the other day when he stopped swimming halfway down the damn lane. Said he didn’t have a dream or a future.”

Makoto’s gut clenches, intent faltering a little. “He said that?”

“Yeah,” Rin says, scoffing. “Really pissed me off, to be honest. But he’s right; he’s not me. If he wants to spend the rest of his life drifting around Iwatobi like a ghost there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“That’s not true,” Makoto says, instinctive, shaking his head. Rin makes a sound like he’s about to speak, but he pushes on over him, firm now. “No, Rin, I’m serious. Every change Haru has ever made in his life comes down to you. Swimming in the relay- wanting to swim seriously- you’re directly responsible for all of it.”

“That’s not-” Rin starts, caught-off guard, then deflects: “That’s different. I wasn’t- all I did was push him to do things I already knew he- I can’t make him want something if he doesn’t want it at all.”

“Haru is scared,” Makoto says, plainly. “He’s never liked change, and he hates pressure, and he’s overwhelmed. But you know as well as I do that what he wants isn’t to stagnate here for the rest of his life. To be honest, Rin- if it was just me, maybe I wouldn’t be so sure of that. But- and I know you won’t believe me- you’ve always been better than I am at knowing what’s good for Haru. Maybe you can just read it on him, or maybe you change his perspective on things, but everything you’ve ever pushed him into has changed his life for the better.”

Rin is silent for a moment, audibly stunned; when he speaks again it’s with obvious disbelief. “You’re giving me way too much credit, Tachibana. I mean- shit, you’re the one who has the telepathic connection to the guy.”

“I understand Haru,” Makoto concedes, rubbing at his brow. “But I’ve never been able to change his mind on anything. At best he does things to indulge me.”

“Look,” Rin tries, “If you just talk to him about it-“

“I tried,” Makoto replies, voice going funny. “We fought.”

“You- what?” Rin asks, aghast. “You fought? You don’t fight.”

“We do now,” Makoto murmurs, fighting the tightness in his chest. “He doesn’t- he feels like I’ve betrayed him. I didn’t- I hadn’t told him about Tokyo yet.”

“Shit,” Rin says, after a beat, still disbelieving but gentler now. “Okay. So...”

“You need to talk to him,” Makoto repeats, quietly. “Even if he gets angry at you, he won’t- it’s different for you. I can’t do it.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re not as used to the death glare,” Rin says, caustic, then sighs feelingly. “Look, I mean- I’ll talk to him, obviously. I just don’t- he won’t answer my calls or texts, if I start pushing. And trying to fight him on this at his place is never going to work; he’ll just kick me out.”

It's telling that he's already run through the options; Makoto gets stuck on this, rubbing his knuckles anxiously as he tries to conjure neutral ground. "At the pool, maybe-"

"The public pool? Or school property?" Rin snorts, flat. "Yeah, that's a good setting for a heart to heart."

"There has to be somewhere," Makoto manages, trying to keep his breathing steady, voice taut nonetheless. He thinks Rin catches it, because he goes quiet, then wry. 

"Could take him to Australia."

It's in the way he says it: caustic, but with a note of uncertainty. Makoto's breath catches.

“You could. You could take him to Australia.”

“Wh- seriously ?” Rin sputters, almost defensively. “Isn’t that a little fucking drastic?”

“It’s your home ground,” Makoto pushes on, emboldened. “You could make him listen there. It wouldn't- I could pay his ticket.”

“Woah, woah- you realise how much that costs, right? And there’s no guarantee he’d care any more about what I have to say there than here!”

“He already cares- you just need to confront him honestly about it.”

Rin makes thirty seconds' worth of further protesting sounds, then exhales longly, voice brittle. “You’re sure that he needs this?”

“Yes.”

“Because I’ve fucked up with Haru enough that I’m not keen on dragging him to another continent to push him where he doesn’t want to be pushed, Makoto. So I need you to be sure.”

“I’m sure,” Makoto promises, conviction bleeding into his words. “It’s his  _future_ , Rin.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Rin clicks his tongue. “Fine. Fine. I’ll see when I can clear a couple of days.”

“I’ll pay for everything,” Makoto rushes, belated, relief flowing through him almost physically. “Just send me the invoices for the hotels and the flights, I’ll-“

“Don’t be stupid,” Rin snaps, crossly. “The flight, fine, I won’t bother wasting my breath on changing your mind, but the rest is on me.”

“You’re already taking the time to-“

“To what, take a holiday? Put up with some attitude? ’S the least I owe him after everything.”

They fall silent, Rin likely embarrassed, and Makoto mentally chastises himself for every time he’s ever begrudged Rin anything, because he can breathe again, just like that, serene in the certainty that Rin can do this. It’s instinctive, second nature: he trusts him to make this right.

Aloud, he clears his throat. “Rin? Thank you.”

“Nothing to thank me for,” Rin mutters, definitely embarrassed now, and then quietens. “Are you- you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Makoto says, quietly, and is not lying. He doesn’t feel it just yet, but he knows he will be. 

Rin only texts him twice, the day of- right before boarding, and upon arrival in Australia. The lack of feedback doesn’t surprise him- for one, both Rin and Haru are consistently terrible at communicating with the outside world when they’re in each other’s presence, and for another he imagines Rin is at least somewhat preoccupied with convincing Haru to abruptly fly to a different continent with him. 

He has no idea what he tells him. If it was him, he’d probably come clean from the start, but Rin isn’t like that, especially not when he’s like this, burning with purpose, fearless with conviction. It’s fairly plausible Rin gives no explanation at all, just tells Haru they’re going, bulldozes through his defences. That Haru gives in is a by-gone conclusion.

It’s a lesson he’s come to learn, over time. No matter what it looks like, where Rin goes, Haru will eventually follow. 

Life feels funny, in the days that they’re gone. He can’t imagine Haru outside of Iwatobi. In the handful of pictures Rin sends, he looks strangely normal- avoiding the camera, eyes set on the horizon, despite the Sydney Opera House looming behind him. 

_Haru’s English is terrible_ , Rin writes, once.  _And he bitches when I translate too much._

It strikes him that this is the first time where they are actually, genuinely separated. Oceans apart. When Haru comes back, whatever happens, he will have experienced the world without Makoto by his side. 

It makes his heart ache a little, but simultaneously it makes him smile, long-suffering, because they look like they belong, the two of them, side by side in some aquarium. Haru is fighting not to show the gleam of joy in his eyes, and Rin is laughing at him for it, and Makoto thinks that in their own way they stabilise each other too, wherever they are, slipping into their patterns. Two prodigal people, wound tightly together.

Rin doesn’t write much, while they’re gone, not to Makoto nor anyone else. He doesn’t worry, not quite, because he trusts Rin in this, but the waiting eats at him. If Rin- when Rin succeeds- when Rin gets through to him, Haru will make up his mind, and Makoto doesn’t know what he’ll want. 

It’s probably for the better that Rin is the one to walk him through this, because Rin has only ever wanted Haru at his best. Makoto worries that if it were up to him he’d be content with just Haru. 

He can’t have it both ways- Haru free and Haru with him- but that’s all right. He’s always known that this day would come. Beneath the doubt he knows it’s not goodbye, not really. They won’t ever stop being friends. He’ll just have to get used to seeing him a lot less, and that will have to be okay too. 

He wishes, though, he could have seen it, just a little of it. Could have heard the emotion in Rin’s voice, watched him open a new chapter, extend a hand, promise sights unseen. Felt the world stop turning, once Haru really listened. Most of all he wishes he might have seen when it finally clicked, and the look on Haru’s face. He imagines his eyes shone, and his lips parted, and he turned to Rin with that same sort of breathless certainty he’d once declared  _I want to swim with Rin_ with. It’s not hard to fantasise: Haru gets that look, when it comes to his passions, few though they might be. 

Still. Those moments, precious though they might be to all of them, are Rin and Haru’s alone. It is only fair that they have those parts of each other; Makoto is happy with just seeing the results.

“I’m going to Tokyo,” Haru announces, before Makoto’s even finished greeting them, his eyes sky-blue, self-assured. “And I’m going to swim.”

“Competitively,” Rin chimes in, irrepressible, from where he’d been trying very hard to give them their privacy. Haru narrows his eyes at him, inclines his head a little when he looks back to Makoto.

“Competitively.”

“Oh,” Makoto says, heart soaring. Haru’s gaze is steady but just a little tentative, forgiveness and apology and gratitude fighting for purchase in the space between them, and Makoto feels the world right itself, lips quirking helplessly into a smile. “That sounds like a good plan, Haru-chan.”

“I think it is,” Haru says, relief in the way he glances away. “Don’t call me -chan.”

** iv. tides of change **

Haru never says outright why he’s made up his mind, and Makoto doesn’t ask, but it’s not exactly like anyone tries to keep it secret. In a way, this all is no surprise; Haru’s wants have always centred around swimming with Rin. 

“I always hoped it would go like this,” Gou says, wistful, toes skimming the surface of the pool. “Nii-san has a pretty one-track mind, but I was never sure if Haruka-senpai would go in the same direction. It just seems right, though, doesn’t it? The two of them swimming together.”

“It does.”

“You want to know something silly?” Gou asks, expression slightly abashed as they watch Haru break the surface of the water just ahead of her brother. “Sometimes I really wish I was a swimmer too.”

“Really?” Makoto asks, a little surprised. She’s always seemed quite insistent that she had no interest in the sport herself. “I didn’t know that.”

“I don’t, most of the time,” Gou hurries, shaking her head. “I don’t want to be an athlete. It’s way too precarious a job. But watching you all…” 

She trails off, smiles. “It’s beautiful, right? Something special.”

“It is,” Makoto agrees, frowning a little in concern. “We never would have made it this special on our own, though.”

To his relief, Gou only scoffs. “I know that! I remember the state you all were in. Nii-san better be grateful I was around to whip Haruka-senpai into shape.”

“I’m sure he is,” Makoto says, fighting a grin. Sometimes the sibling resemblance is overwhelming. 

They sit and consider their friends for a moment longer, then Gou laughs under her breath, curls her legs up beneath her.

“It feels kind of crazy to think about how things were with them last year, doesn’t it? Although I guess there was some drama this year too. I can’t imagine what next year’s incident will be.”

“They always sort things out in the end,” Makoto reassures, then allows himself to tease a little. “Though I could do without any fist fights or continent changes.”

Gou laughs, shakes her head. “Boys.”

It is either endearing or alarming that she thinks any part of the Rin-and-Haru melodrama can be explained away by their gender.

“What’s so funny?” Rin inquires, pushing himself out of the water with a suspicious look Makoto hopes is in jest. “You two seem awfully cosy.”

“Chill out, nii-san, we’re only talking about you and your destined rival,” Gou retorts, sarcastic, which makes Rin scowl and Haru roll his eyes as he drifts towards them.

“I have never called him that!”

“You so have! I’m pretty sure you told mom that the day you first saw him swim!”

“How would you remember that?! Weren’t you fucking four years old?”

“I believe you,” Haru interjects, unfazed. Rin groans loudly and kicks water in his face.

“Thanks, Gou, way to give him something else to hold over my head for the rest of eternity.”

“You embarrass yourself perfectly fine without my help,” Gou sniffs. 

“I think it’s nice that you share goals,” Makoto says, diplomatically, disguising his laughter. “In a way, it does feel like this was always supposed to happen.”

“Destiny is stupid.”

“You say that now,” Rin says, eyes gleaming with abrupt confidence. “Wait until you see me get gold.”

“Silver, maybe,” Haru retorts, then ducks under water, saving face. 

It’s not easy adjusting, of course. Tokyo is massive, and overwhelming, and university is difficult, and Haru is extremely uneasy within their new environment, finds the pressure of the course unpleasant and the competition disturbing. Losing repeatedly to better swimmers unsettles him as much as it fires up his competitive streak, and the reappearance of old friends in their lives comes with its share of complications. He is, overall, as emotionally unsteady as Makoto has ever known him to be, though mercifully his determination seems intact.

“You’ve gotta use the setbacks as motivation,” Rin tells him, steadily, when he calls. “If I gave up whenever you beat me in a race we’d never have gotten anywhere.”

“It’s annoying,” Haru mutters, reluctant. He’s always sort of flighty during their calls, gaze flickering between the screen and anywhere else like he doesn’t want to make eye contact. 

“No shit it’s annoying. You can’t just coast your way to success, y’know. I only got this good cause I worked my ass off for it.” 

Haru opens his mouth like he wants to say something, reconsiders, eyes flickering towards Makoto. Rin seems to catch it, though, because he shifts, shakes his head. “You swim for yourself, right? So make it about your personal best. It’s not about the rest of them.”

“Hm. Even you?”

“Fuck off,” Rin huffs, crossing his arms. “That’s different. We’re rivals.”

“I could have multiple rivals.”

“ _Haru_ , ” Rin groans, irritated. “Look, just don’t let it get to you, okay? I know you’re this prodigy who’s never really had to fight for a spot on the podium, but this is big leagues. It would be pretty stupid if you could make it to an Olympic level without having suffered for it a little, right?”

“I never said I wanted to go Olympic.”

“Well, I am,” Rin counters. “So unless you don’t think you can keep up with me, you better not be thinking of giving up.”

Rin doesn’t actually call all that often. It’s not radio silence, but he’s just as busy as Haru is, and it always befalls him to make the first move, because Haru is both technologically stunted and terrible at maintaining contact, so he only ends up calling every couple of weeks, sporadic. He texts more regularly- for Makoto it’s usually something funny he read online, or inquiring about his life; what he texts Haru is predictably swimming-related, grilling him about his routine or challenging his times.

Makoto misses him, obviously, but he’s actually sort of worried about Haru. He thinks Haru knows this is different- that Rin leaving for Australia this time is not what it was last time- but Haru is cagey about these things, and oddly defensive about missing Rin. The closest he comes to acknowledging his absence is complaining about it when Makoto comments on his latest missive from Sydney.

“He always has to make things difficult.”

“Haru-chan?”

“It’s just like Samezuka,” Haru says, prodding darkly at his fish. “He could have just swam in Tokyo.”

He knows better, obviously. Rin had taken great care to explain himself ahead of his move, to Haru most of all. But abstract notions of self-improvement and personal growth don’t quite balance the Rin-shaped hole in their lives, and the timing isn’t ideal. Usually when Rin makes Haru take the plunge he’s at least diving alongside him.

They settle into a new routine, and Makoto adjusts, makes new friends at university, enjoys his classes, misses home less desperately. Haru says nothing on the topic, but he jogs in the morning and eats meat twice a week, and his times climb steadily higher; whether he is happy Makoto can’t tell, but he’s as driven as he’s ever known him.

When he doesn’t qualify for his heat, Makoto feels months’ worths of anxieties surge to the surface, his heart in his stomach as he watches Haru leave the pool, and for a moment he questions every time he’s ever pushed Haru towards competition. Then Rin exhales, loud and distracting.

“God, you guys really aren’t used to him losing, are you? It’s just one race.”

Makoto, briefly, could kiss him.

“About time you start putting some effort in,” Rin declares, to Haru, when they reach him; something flashes through his face, and he keeps his eyes on Rin’s like he suspects he’s being lied to.

“I lost.”

“And what a loss it was,” Rin grins, just this side of mocking. “C’mon, get changed, we have training regimens to plan.”

Haru’s eyes widen just a fraction before he looks away, but it’s enough that Makoto suddenly understands that this has weighed over him for a while, the fear of not being good enough, veering off-course from Rin’s trajectory. 

Aloud, he says: “I’m not eating more meat.”

Makoto isn’t so worried anymore.

It’s a long way, obviously, to the Olympics. Some days Makoto thinks it’s too far-fetched of a dream, even for them. But Haru starts to swim like he believes it, despite his protests, and the way he swims makes Makoto believe in it too. 

He watches Haru improve, week after week, inside and outside the water. He treats their part of Tokyo like it’s Iwatobi- knows the shop-owners and the stray cats and the latest possible time he can stay soaking in the tub if he wants to catch the train. With people, too, he relaxes- befriends his fellow swimmers, interacts with Makoto’s friends, on one occasion even hosts a gathering in his apartment to celebrate Makoto’s promotion. It’s maybe the proudest Makoto has ever been of him, though he tries not to stifle him with enthusiasm.

“Please stop smiling at me so hard.”

“I’m just having a good day!”

“ _Makoto_.”

He finds himself spending a little less time with him, now that he’s doing better, and he’s not sure if it’s because he subconsciously feels less of a need to supervise him or because Haru doing better has involved a lot of extra hours in the water. It leads to him somehow stumbling his way into a date or two with one of the girls in his class, which makes Haru amusingly wary, like he expects Makoto to abruptly turn into some Mikoshiba-esque suitor overnight. 

Things aren’t always easy, of course. University is intense, and competitive swimming is doubly so. There are days where Haru is so strung-out he doesn’t even like to be in the water, and days where he takes a lot of convincing (and, most often, threats to call Rin) to stick to any of his routines. Mostly, what worries Makoto is that Haru still seems slightly terse where Rin is concerned- makes no more of an effort to talk to him, but gets increasingly morose when he doesn’t hear from him. It’s an uncomfortable status quo, made worse by the fact that Makoto gets the feeling there’s something underlying it that he can’t understand.

It’s fairly plausible that Haru is simply too hung-up on what happened last time to trust that Rin actually intends to return. It would explain why he seems resigned to not hearing from him and makes no effort to rectify their silences, for one, and it’s what Rin himself seems to believe, for another. He asks Makoto about it, once.

“You think he’ll ever forgive me?”

It catches Makoto off-guard. “For what?” 

“For leaving,” Rin says, tiredly. And he’s right, actually- Haru had expected no apology for the way Rin had lashed out upon his return, but he still holds a grudge over his departure. 

“He’s not angry at you about that,” Makoto tries, though he’s not entirely sure it’s true, and Rin only scoffs.

“I mean, I get it, you know? I have a shitty track record with this stuff. It’s not like I didn’t think about it before I went, but- I had to do it. And also, I- that’s how I am, Makoto, I can’t stay pinned down like you two.”

“Haru doesn’t want that either,” Makoto says, then corrects himself: “Or he does, but he doesn’t expect it from you. I think- maybe if you just made it clearer that you’re not leaving him behind each time you leave.”

“I _try_ ,” Rin exclaims, miserably. “I call, don’t I? I text him, too, and he never answers me. So what the hell am I supposed to do? The whole point of us swimming is doing this thing together, and he _knows_ that- I’ve  _told_ him that, he makes fun of me because of  _how much_ I’ve told him that!”

He sounds hurt, beneath the frustration. Makoto swallows and goes for honesty.

“You know, last time, when you left, it was like you vanished completely. So it’s the first time we’ve all been friends with you this far away. And it’s hard for everyone, I think.” Beat. “We’ve- we’ve had to relearn how to miss someone.”

“I miss you too,” Rin admits, quietly. “Fuck, you know I do. I just- I don’t know. I feel like I’m being punished.”

It’s more than that, Makoto is sure. Haru is not incapable of being somewhat vindictive, but he is far from cruel, and he understands Rin’s motivations well enough not to do that to him. If he is keeping him at arm’s length, it is most likely because he is protecting himself, although from what Makoto doesn't know. Rin is right to note that he spends ample time reassuring Haru of his commitment to their goals, and equally he puts far more of an effort into maintaining conversation than Haru does: anxieties aside, Haru cannot genuinely believe that Rin intends on abandoning him somehow. So there’s something more to it, and here Makoto is lost.

It’s unfair on Rin, though, because he’s trying, really trying, to do things right, this time around. 

“You could answer him, once in a while,” Makoto says, some days after their call, watching Haru’s screen flash with another notification. “He asks me for news every time we talk.”

Haru only frowns, eyes on the pan. “I answer when he calls.”

“And that’s not often,” Makoto presses. He’s gotten better at this whole confrontation business. “He thinks you’re mad at him.”

Haru looks up then, expression torn, before he lowers his gaze. “I’m not mad at him.”

“Really?”

“That’s not why I don’t answer,” Haru deflects, flipping the mackerel. “I don’t like texting.”

“Haru,” Makoto sighs, tentative. “It’s hard on him too.”

“He’s in Australia,” Haru says, sharp, turning to face him. “That’s not going to change just because I tell him how far I went jogging today.”

“If you just-“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Haru snaps, and there’s something unrecognisable to his expression- not stubborn pretence, but also not the defensive anger Makoto worried about triggering. He seems- he seems like he knows the answers, this time around, and doesn’t want to share them.

“All right,” Makoto says, softly, and doesn’t mention it again.

Rin comes to Japan for heats, tanned golden by the Australian sun, and things are strained. With everyone else, Rin seems himself, teasing and enthusiastic, but with Haru there is a tangible discomfort in the air, like he doesn’t quite know if he should act like everything’s normal. 

The three of them go have lunch with Hinata, despite Makoto’s trepidation, because it seems sort of inevitable for her to meet him when (as she puts it) she feels like he’s the third roommate that’s coincidentally never around, and also because by some weird twist of fate Rin is probably the person Makoto has kept best-informed of his developing romance. 

“You three hang out often?” Rin asks, as they venture towards the park, wincing a little at the wind. “Fuck, it’s freezing.”

“Not really,” Makoto says, unwinding his scarf to offer it to him. “We mostly see each other at university, and Haru’s timetable is pretty different to ours.”

“Keep it, keep it, I’m fine,” Rin protests, though he cedes when Makoto doesn’t budge. “Thanks. The climate shift is a bitch. Oi, Haru, do you two get along, then?”

Haru makes a non-committal sound, nose buried in his own scarf. “She’s fine.”

“Bet he’s jealous,” Rin grins, conspiratorial. “Tough luck if she’s prettier than you.”

“Stop it,” Makoto half-laughs, tempering Haru’s flat look. “They get along fine. Hinata really likes him.”

“Thank god for that,” Rin opines, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “Sort of a prerequisite for dating you.”

This Makoto does not dispute, just shaking his head through a smile. “I’m starting to wonder if this was a good idea.”

He’s mostly worried about adding Rin to the mix of existing awkwardness where Haru and Hinata are concerned, which Rin must know, but he only winks. “You scared I’ll swoop her off her feet?”

“What will you do? Cry on her?” Haru asks, unimpressed. 

“ _Okay_ ,” Makoto interjects, before Rin can sputter out a response. “Guys, please. Just- behave. I don’t want Hinata to think that my two best friends hate each other.”

It’s the kind of too-honest phrasing he tries to avoid on days where he’s not meeting his almost-maybe-potential girlfriend in the company of his outsider-unfriendly best friend and said best friend’s destined rival, because worrying that they hate each other is one of Rin and Haru’s most unfortunate pastimes, and he winces internally as soon as they both quieten.

“Well,” Rin says, after a beat, smile not meeting his eyes. “Don’t have to worry about me.”

As it turns out this is completely true, because the moment Hinata arrives Rin abruptly becomes about as charming as Makoto has ever seen him be. It’s almost disturbingly effective. Rin is charming, of course, charismatic even at his worst, but seeing him actively try to be is an experience Makoto has only witnessed once a long time ago, and it gets him just as much as it gets Hinata, who seems cheerfully enthralled.

“A tarantula? You must be joking!”

“I kid you not,” Rin replies, nodding vigorously. “Like, this close to my face. And I was coming in at thirty- ah, sorry, I don’t know how familiar you are with swimming terminology-“

“A little,” Hinata reassures, pointing towards Makoto. “I watch him coach sometimes.”

“He’s good, right?” Rin beams, before waving a hand. “Well, anyways, I was coming in fast, so I couldn’t really kill my momentum, you know? My mind just blanked- my body was still set on winning the race, right, so I just kept going on auto-pilot, screaming internally, and the moment my hand hit the wall I pulled myself upright and  _punched it away_.”

“Oh my god, Rin,” Makoto says, horrified. “You punched a tarantula?”

“I know! I know! I wasn’t thinking! It just went fucking flying backwards like some kind of horrible tennis ball.”

“Did you win your race?” Hinata asks, engrossed. Rin blinks, then smiles, sharper now.

“Hah. Yeah.”

“It made local news,” Haru volunteers, monotone, which makes Rin’s expression twist as Makoto politely hums in surprise.

“Someone captured it on camera?”

“Yeah, but you can’t really see it,” Rin says, a touch belated, resting his cheek against his palm. “Anyways, I’d say that was my most Australian experience so far.”

“Exceeded expectations,” Hinata laughs, shaking her head. “Ah, Nanase-kun, you’ve been there too, right? How did you find it?”

Haru glances away, then back, put on the spot. “Big.”

“It’s only like ten times the size of Japan,” Rin confirms, sarcastic. “Real observant of you.”

Oddly, Haru chooses this moment to relent, tone going vaguely polite as he looks towards Hinata. “It was a lot to take in. Like visiting Samezuka.”

“How was it like that at all?” Rin asks, midway between baffled and annoyed. Haru only shrugs.

“The people were strange and there was a nice pool.”

For a moment Rin looks like he could flip the table or start crying out of frustration. Mercifully, he just scrubs a hand over his face and releases an overwhelmed laugh. “Right, sure. If you put it that way.”

Lunch goes fine, overall; Rin and Haru bicker over Haru’s food choices and then get engrossed in comparing their lap times, which comes as somewhat of a relief because it’s the most normal they’ve been all visit, and Hinata seems entertained, smiling warmly at their antics as Makoto heaves a silent sigh of relief. 

“You know, I always found him sort of hard to imagine,” Hinata confesses, afterwards, as they walk towards her bus stop, Rin and Haru racing ahead.

“Because Nanase-kun is so unique, I couldn’t really see what kind of person would- I don’t know, balance him out, I guess? But Matsuoka-kun is very…”

“Unique?” Makoto repeats, smiling. Hinata laughs.

“He is, though! I feel like I understand Nanase-kun a lot better for having seen them interact.”

“Ah, really? He’s been pretty quiet today.”

“Word-wise, maybe,” Hinata says, tapping her nose. “I thought he was a lot easier to read. Can’t you ask Matsuoka-kun to hang around a little longer?”

Makoto huffs out a laugh. “Well, he wouldn’t stay for us before, but maybe if you ask nicely.”

“I’m sure he’ll emphasise with my need to connect to Nanase-kun better,” Hinata nods, faux-serious. “It’s a necessary sacrifice on his part.”

“Haru would certainly warm up to you if you pulled that off.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Hinata says, sobering as she watches them. “Must be hard on them. I don’t think I could do it.”

Makoto’s slightly confused frown prompts explanation; she waves her hand. “You know, like- long distance.”

“Right,” Makoto says, still a little confused. “It’s hard on everyone, but Rin’s doing his best this time around.”

“Still,” Hinata says, sympathetic, and then hooks her arm through his, blushing faintly as she smiles. “I’m glad you’re just a bus ride away.”

Rin teases him mercilessly the entire way back to his apartment while Haru sits vindicated and pretending not to smile.

** V. deep dive **

He feels like a complete idiot for it later, but he genuinely doesn’t understand until it hits him over the head.

He knows, objectively, that he can’t blame himself too much for not connecting the dots. For one, none of them have been culturally conditioned to examine Rin and Haru’s relationship through a different lens-  _rivals_ has always seemed an adequately dramatic title for their friendship, and it’s not like either of them are the type to attract any serious romantic speculation from the group. Haru is Haru, not altogether unserious about his attraction to water, and while Rin is at least a romantic soul, his fantasies have always been pretty swimming-focused too. Over the years, sure, Makoto has inquired whether Haru was interested in any of the pretty girls swooning over him, but he’s never expected an affirmative. In a way he’s always had a nebulous image of some exceptional girl that would appear out of thin air one day to seize Haru’s interest.

The other thing, harder to explain to outsiders, is that Rin and Haru are slightly surreal sort of people. Prolonged exposure to either of them warps your sense of normalcy. So yes, somewhere between relays and  _My Shining_ s and earth-shattering staring contests Rin and Haru evidently strayed beyond the confines of rivalry, or friendship, or really any kind of relationship not written in the stars somehow, but it comes so naturally to them that it’s hard to register what that might mean. Haru has always been one-track minded, and Rin is suffocatingly intense about everything he cares about; that the two of them are so wrapped up in each other feels normal.

There’s also the fact that, looking back, everyone Makoto knows is at least a little enamoured with either or both of them. His undying devotion to Haru isn’t exactly par for the course, for example, but he’s always found it kind of hard to imagine any different, considering their history. So most friendships don’t involve quite so much breathless admiration or fervent affection; most friendships also don’t include several near-death rescues or future Olympic medallists. Haru and Rin are hard to judge when everyone around them can empathise. 

All in all, then, he has ample reason to remain oblivious to the reality of their situation. It doesn’t make him feel any better once it hits, not least because he is beaten to it by at least three people.

“To be fair,” Gou says, years down the line, sympathetic, “I think any of us on Rin’s side of things had a way easier time of figuring it out.”

“He was really fucking obvious,” Sousuke agrees, dismissively. That he knew for years adds insult to injury somehow. “He gave me a damn love letter he wrote the guy.”

“You only ever knew him around Haru,” Gou adds, patting his knee. “So you didn’t know he wasn’t like that around everyone.”

“But you knew it was mutual,” Makoto mumbles, somewhat despondently. It is worth noting that none of them are sober during this conversation. “I couldn’t even read it off Haru.”

“Sousuke didn’t know that! Why’d you think he was so mean to Haru?” Gou explains, patting now gone actively painful. “And I only thought it might be because- ah, it’s kind of dumb.”

“Spill,” Sousuke urges, predatory gleam in his eye. Gou glances quickly around, then huddles in.

“When I saw you guys at Iwatobi again, you remember? Obviously none of you knew who I was- it had been years since we’d seen each other, and even back when Rin was at Iwatobi it’s not like you really knew me well. So I didn’t expect anyone to really recognise me. But Haruka-senpai- he knew me instantly. And I don’t know if it’s because he just, like, remembered everything about nii-san, but I always kind of suspected that he just- recognised my face, because we sorta looked alike as kids.”

“I hate that I buy that,” Sousuke mutters, depressed. Makoto groans.

“I  noticed all of those things. I just didn’t- I can’t believe I didn’t  _understand_.”

So every single person Rin has ever spoken about Haru to (read: everyone he’s ever come into contact with, apparently) could read it off him, fine. Gou makes a decent point in that Makoto didn’t have much ground for comparison. But that he spent years watching Haru act the way he did- watch Haru  _pine_ , watch Haru let Rin knock him into the ground and cry on his face, watch Haru let Rin drag him off to Australia and return with a dream, and somehow it never occurred to him that there was still somewhere left to go in their relationship? That’s just embarrassing. 

Nagisa, of course, finds it hilarious, from his reigning position as the first to know.

“What makes it so funny is that even  they beat you to it. That’s a whole new level of denial.”

And that, really, is the crux of the matter: he can’t believe that even Haru and Rin themselves figured it out before he did.

In retrospect, no one is entirely sure at which point Rin and Haru wised up to their feelings. At which point said feelings developed is more readily agreed upon, with consensus being that for Rin it was pretty blatantly love at first swim, and that Haru necessarily wasn’t much better or he wouldn’t have quite literally gone through the stages of grief post their commonly dubbed break-up. Self-awareness, though, is a whole different matter.

“I suspect Rin-senpai of having understood his feelings at some point in Australia, with his lashing out upon return thus amplified by denial,” Rei posits, consistently, “Whereas Haruka-senpai might have felt them instinctively far sooner.”

Inevitably Nagisa will shake his head. “No way! You have it wrong. Rin-chan noticed first, but Haru-chan understood before him.”

In Makoto’s books, Nagisa’s emotional intelligence probably beats out Rei’s psychological profiling on this one, but he finds any dates hard to pinpoint. He thinks in a way they must have always known; they’ve had so many dramatic moments that it’s possible to trace realisations to any given one. 

What he knows for certain, though, is that Rin leaving for a second time either triggered or cemented Haru’s awareness of his feelings. It explains the year retroactively- the missing element to Haru’s odd behaviour. Rin’s last stint in Australia had followed a precocious breakup, Haru harshly shutting his emotions down; with Rin gone again and no hard feelings between them this time around, Haru’s confused unhappiness was predictable. 

It’s a comedy of errors, really. Haru responds to missing Rin by stubbornly trying not to miss him, self-aware enough to try not to make it any harder on Rin to stay away, unsure of how to do so without hurting him in the process. And Rin, in return, takes Haru’s silences as rejection or resentment, doesn’t challenge the cold shoulder, bites his tongue against his disappointment. Through actively attempting to be more considerate they somehow wind up making things worse. 

Still, at the time, Makoto sees these things without seeing the writing on the wall, and so he reassures Rin and tries to talk to Haru and really has no idea how they’re going to fix things this time around. 

In the end, it all unravels very fast. Summer approaches, and the most intensive heats; Haru’s times climb exponentially, and Makoto sees little of him beyond their scheduled meals together. Rin flies in, restless for having had to take it easy on a pulled muscle, and when Makoto heads to Haru’s the following day to ride to his hotel, he finds the both of them in the kitchen instead, Rin hopped up against the counter (an offence Haru has previously starved Nagisa for) as Haru cooks.

“Ah, uh,” Makoto blinks. “Hello?”

“Long story,” Rin says, wincing. 

As it turns out, Rin’s hotel had some kind of electric incident and cancelled his reservation, which he only discovered stepping into his taxi after a nine hour flight, upon which he dropped his phone and cracked it beyond repair. His taxi driver offered him his own phone; Rin had Haru’s number memorised.

“He didn’t even pick up,” Rin says, at this point in the story, leaning back onto his hands with an unreadable expression. “Taxi driver thought I was some kind of tragic exile.”

“You still gave him my address.”

“I wasn’t going to ask him to drive me to my mom’s place, was I?”

“That’s crazy, Rin,” Makoto interjects, shaking his head. “Did they reimburse you, at least? Where will you be staying from now?”

“Yeah, got the refund today,” Rin says, gesturing towards his laptop. “And Haru said I could crash.”

“Oh,” Makoto says, after a beat. Haru scrupulously is not looking at anyone. “That’s very nice of you.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Haru mutters, glancing back. “I have space. And we’re both out swimming for the next few days.”

Considering Haru regularly complains about how claustrophobic his apartment is compared to the Iwatobi house, it’s a miracle Makoto keeps a serene expression throughout this statement.

Still: Rin stays with Haru, and everyone holds their breath a little. 

Makoto is mid-exams, but he makes a point of checking in on them, obviously, texts Rin for their times on days he knows they’re swimming. They’re excellent, unsurprisingly, but Rin's texts are restrained, factual; Makoto can't quite discern if it's just his hectic schedule or if things are increasingly terse between him and Haru.

The last day of his exams coincides with Haru’s last race before the summer break, finals for the nationals in his age group, and they plan on celebration whichever way it goes, but when the first thing he sees upon leaving the examination room is Rin’s hasty picture of Haru’s name on the scoreboard, he feels excited joy bubble up in him like it hasn’t since high school.

The swimmers celebrate at a bar down the street from the main campus faculty, with some other familiar faces like Nao and Sousuke making an appearance amongst the crowd as their high school friends bemoan their exclusion from adult activities. He feels more his age than he has all month, watching old friends and new bask in each other’s company, catching seconds of Rin's conversation before he flits onwards to the next person, smiling at Haru where he's withdrawn to the edge of a booth looking quietly satisfied.

He is content to people-watch for most of the evening, unsurprised that about ninety percent of their conversation is about swimming and swimming alone, mostly entertained by the odd dynamics of the group. Ikuya regards Rin with the utmost suspicion, worsened every time his brother slings an arm around his neck or Haru eye-smiles at him, which Sousuke seems to find supremely entertaining; most of Haru’s new swimming companions, in fact, spend much of the evening unabashedly observing Rin and Haru interact. 

He ends up next to Sousuke at some point in the evening, who nods at the group with an amused glint to his eyes despite the serious set of his features.

“So much tension. It’s a wonder anyone gets any swimming done.”

Makoto smiles, sips his drink. He finds Sousuke very agreeable despite himself, maybe partially because in spite of their opposite attitudes they both play the role of Rin and Haru’s watchers.

“Hm. There’s a lot of shared history between everyone.”

“If that Tono guy gets one more passive aggressive comment in towards Nanase I think Rin’s going to flip his shit,” Sousuke comments, nursing his beer contemplatively. “What’s his damage, anyways?”

“He seems to hold a grudge against him for perceived harm to his best friend and his swimming career,” Makoto replies, pointedly placid, which makes Sousuke snort, at least. 

“Point fucking taken. At least I told the guy straight-up what my issue was.”

Makoto only smiles wryly. “Mh. Well. He seems to have a rather intense attitude where Ikuya is concerned, and he doesn’t seem too happy that they’ve reconciled.”

“What’d Nanase do to the kid? Don’t tell me he’s obsessed with him too.”

“Well,” Makoto starts, then pauses. When Sousuke laughs he shakes his head, long-suffering.

“We used to swim together. His brother’s a very good swimmer too, and he was impressed by Haru-chan at the time; I think he put him on somewhat of a pedestal. Then Rin left, and Haru- stopped swimming, so…”

“No way,” Sousuke says, raising his brows. “That explains why he’s been glaring daggers at Rin all night. I thought it was just because Rin and his brother slept together.”

Makoto promptly chokes on his drink so vehemently that half of the group turns around in alarm, Sousuke slamming him heartily on the back as he struggles to regain his breath.

“You didn’t know? My bad. Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious. Just convenient, y’know.”

“Ah,” Makoto starts, still wheezing. Suddenly he can’t stop staring at Natsuya. “I, ah, I’m- I think I need some fresh air.”

Sousuke watches him go with mild bemusement as he tries to school his features into something less blatantly shell-shocked. Based on the way Haru frowns at him he doesn’t think he succeeds.

He takes about five minutes to regain his composure, trying to sort his thoughts out. So Rin and- Rin and  Natsuya Kirishima \- that means Rin is… 

He shouldn’t be making assumptions, he knows: just convenient, Sousuke had said, very casually, so maybe this sort of thing is more common than he knows; maybe at Samezuka… He stops that train of thought rapidly. It’s not a big deal, obviously, it doesn’t change anything about Rin, but there’s something about- he doesn’t know, like the fact that Rin is the type of person who can sleep with a fellow swimmer means that he could just as easily sleep with…

Oh. Haru. That’s what’s thrown him off. Not that Rin’s ever seemed inclined to  _seduce Haru_ , except in the swimming context, but then how would Makoto know, anyways? Instinctively he rebels against the idea of having missed something so big- surely  Haru wouldn’t have… And there’s been limited opportunity for it to happen, anyways, unless there had been a lot of covert rendezvous in school, or- oh, god, Australia, hadn’t Nagisa said they shared a bed?

He shakes himself. His imagination is running away from him; there’s no way Rin and Haru have had some secret steamy relationship without anyone knowing about it. It’s just that- if Rin swings that way at all, it makes it somehow hard to understand why _not_. 

He feels guilty for thinking it, but it’s true, isn’t it? If Rin can be into guys, then surely of all the people in the world Rin would- should be into Haru. Sousuke might contend, closeness-wise, but Rin has been hung up on Haru for their entire adolescence, one way or another. Rivalry alone has always been a poor excuse for the intensity of their relationship, but now…

He’s being far too presumptive. For all he knows the thing with Natsuya is pure convenience, and Rin remains romantically disinterested in everything except cherry blossom visions and gold medals.

Oh, god. Cherry blossom visions and gold medals. That’s Haru  _again_.

“Makoto?” 

He just about restrains himself from yelping. “Ah, Haru-chan!”

“Why are you standing out here?” Haru asks, gaze flitting around the empty balcony. It’s lightly drizzling; not weather to be standing outside in.

“I got a little overheated,” Makoto says, apologetic. “Sorry, were you looking for me?”

Haru only frowns, light concern warring with suspicion in his furrowed brow. “Did Sousuke say something to you?”

“Ah, no,” Makoto hurries to reassure, not keen on accidentally rekindling the flames of their mutual suspicion after such a long period of relatively cordial entente. “We were having a nice talk, actually. I probably shouldn’t have abandoned him inside.”

“He’s fine,” Haru says, shortly, relaxing a fraction. “He dragged Rin off to some corner when you left.”

He sounds begrudging, but his gaze is keen when he looks back at Makoto. “So why are you really outside?”

“I told you,” Makoto says, smiling firmly. “I got a little overheated. I’m fine now.”

They hold each other’s gaze a moment, Haru obviously not buying it and Makoto’s smile not slipping an inch, and then Haru sighs, looks away. “So you’re coming back inside.”

“It’d be a shame to miss any more of the party,” Makoto agrees, and nods graciously at the door. “Coming?”

He’d feel bad for the blatant lies, but it’s not his secret to tell.

He never knows how he would have read the situation come morning, though he likes to believe he would have put two and two together by that point. Either way, Haru and Rin rob the situation of its mystery that same night. 

The group scatters around midnight, stragglers heading to Natsuya’s hotel room, and Makoto accepts Rin’s invitation to hang around a little longer at Haru’s place since they live so close together anyways.

“I’ve barely spoken to you all night,” Rin says, by way of argument, as they reach Haru’s bus stop. “And I still haven’t heard shit about how your exams went.”

Makoto is pretty exhausted, but also pretty severely tipsy, and never inclined to resist his friends much, so he accepts; the three of them sit in Haru’s tiny living room nursing tea as Makoto tries not to fall asleep and Rin peppers him with questions. It’s nice, though, reminds him of that night they’d had together upon Rin’s first return, Haru shouting into the starry night, comfortable familiarity in their presence. 

He doesn’t know when he nods off, but he wakes up not long after, mildly disoriented and still sort of drunk, curled up on a futon as Rin and Haru’s voices drift not-quite quietly over from the bedroom.

“…him home, I don’t mind.”

“It’s going to be annoying, in the rain. Just let him sleep here.”

A pause, then Rin’s exasperated laugh. “I don’t even know if we can fit in your bed.”

“You can take the floor.”

“Under what, a towel?” Rin gripes, disbelieving. “Makoto has my covers.”

“So we’ll share,” Haru says, unconcerned. “But if you kick me I’ll push you off.”

Groggily, Makoto pushes himself onto his elbows, ready to stumble home and resolve the issue, but the light hitting his eyes from the bedroom makes him dizzy, and he forgets his intent for a moment, silently wincing as he retreats.

“I’m heading to my mom’s mid-afternoon,” Rin is saying, over the sound of his suitcase zipping. “You wanna go swimming in the morning?”

He imagines Haru nods feelingly, because Rin snorts. “I’ll set an alarm.”

There is the sound of running water from Haru’s sink; after a beat Rin speaks again. “Hey, Haru.”

“Mh.”

“Thanks for letting me crash here. I really appreciate it.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, I just- ah, forget it,” Rin sighs, toothbrush clinking against the sink. “Can I use your toothpaste? I’m out.”

For a minute or so everything is quiet, faint rustling audible as Haru moves the covers, and Makoto nearly falls asleep again, head heavy. He’s so close to it that he misses when Haru speaks up, but he knows he must have because Rin responds to it in mild surprise.

“Oh. Yeah. He’s kind of a lot, but he’s a nice guy. And his form is really good. Plus, I don’t know, it’s cool having someone Japanese around there. We all make fun of his American accent.” A beat. “Why’d you ask?”

Pause.  “I was just wondering.”

“You’re curious about my friends, all of a sudden?” Rin teases, before the humour slips from his voice a little. “That’s new.”

This time around the silence is tense, like he’s touching on something they’ve been carefully avoiding the past few days. Makoto is abruptly both far more awake and very conscious that he probably should not be hearing any of this. 

“You’ve already told me about them,” Haru says, slowly. Rin snorts.

“Oh, so you do read my messages? I guess that’s good to know. I was starting to think maybe I had a wrong number.”

“Rin,” Haru starts, warning, and then there’s clattering from Rin dropping something heavily into the sink.

“What, am I not even allowed to act like I’ve noticed it? That’s  _bullshit_. If you don’t want to talk to me when I’m out of the country because you’re- pissed at me, or pretending I don’t exist, or what the hell ever, then fine, but if you seriously expect me to act normal whenever we see each other-“

He exhales loudly, frustration heavy in his voice. “Fuck, I knew staying here was a bad idea-“

“ _Rin_ ,”  Haru repeats, a touch alarmed now. 

“ _What_? What, Haru? What is it that I’m missing, huh? I’m fucking trying, all right? You have no idea how damn much I’m  _trying_. But I can’t not be in Australia right now, and if you’re seriously punishing me for that the entire time I’m away then I’m sorry but I can’t do this, because I can’t spend the next three years doing some weird-“

“I’m not punishing you,” Haru interrupts, voice rising. “I wasn’t trying to- I didn’t think you would mind this much.”

This makes Rin laugh, incredulous and brittle. “Right. Sure. I spend months talking at you and obviously it’s because I’m thrilled to be by myself again.”

“No,” Haru starts, audibly frustrated, “It’s not- I don’t know how to do it.”

“What,  use a phone ? Tolerate my continued existence?”

“Miss you!” Haru exclaims, finally, Makoto wishing desperately he were elsewhere. “I don’t know how to do it like I’m supposed to!”

Rin inhales, sounds faintly gobsmacked. “You- what?”

“It’s too annoying,” Haru manages, voice tight with vexation. “I don’t like waiting months to swim with you. I don’t like that you’re in Australia. I don’t like that there’s a time difference. I don’t like having to text you things that you should be able to know. I want you to stop leaving, and I know that I’m not supposed to, but I don’t know how to act like I  don’t.”

“Haru,” Rin says, vaguely awed. “That’s- you could just have  _said_.”

“Then I would have never stopped saying it, and we would have fought, or you would have come back because you felt bad.”

“That’s not true,” Rin protests, but his voice stays soft with surprise, something hopeful creeping into his tone. “It’s not that I- I don’t like being away from here, either, y’know. I wouldn’t mind if you didn’t. I bet Nagisa begs you to drop out of uni at least as much as he does me, and that’s not a problem, right?”

“That’s different,” Haru says, quieter now, gone safely monotone. Rin shifts tentatively, floorboards creaking lightly under his weight.

“I don’t want you not to miss me. I should, probably. But I’m pretty selfish like that. It feels way worse missing someone if you think they don’t miss you back.”

When Haru doesn’t answer, likely staring obstinately elsewhere, Rin’s voice goes almost sheepish, endearingly unsure.

“This is really embarrassing, so you better get my point, but- sometimes, when I’m swimming, I kind of imagine you’re there too. Which sounds way more stupid out loud, but it’s like- I’m racing you, you know?”

No reply comes, but the silence stretches long enough that Haru must have met his gaze, and Rin sounds more hesitant than ever when he clears his throat. “Like, my first race back in Australia? I could have sworn you were in the next lane over, right before I dived.”

Abruptly, there is the sound of movement, and then Rin makes a startled sound and someone hits the wall. “Woah, woah, what did-“

“I saw you too,” Haru says, something urgent in the words. “Rin. I see you all the time.”

“Oh,” Rin says, punched out, then: “ _Oh_ ,” and then someone moves and they both stop talking altogether, and Makoto lies there with his mouth hanging open wondering if this is all some drunken fever dream he’s going to wake up from any minute.

It’s not. He doesn’t.

In the morning he wakes up to a horrible hang-over and breakfast in the oven, Rin’s neat sprawling handwriting confirming their presence at the pool and bidding him a temporary goodbye in case he leaves before they get back, and for a while he seriously considers having invented the whole debacle in his sleep.

He cleans up after himself, decides against having a shower (if Rin is already using the spare towels, it’d be a hassle to dirty another set), and is midway penning his own note when footsteps alert him to the swimmers’ prompt return; he pauses, folds the note away.

“…Cheated,” Haru is saying, scorn slightly muffled by the door, as Rin laugh-pants nearby.

“Don’t be a sore loser. You said the door.”

“I obviously didn’t mean that one.”

“Sore loser,” Rin shoots back, and then there’s some shuffling as Haru’s keys jingle. “Here, you know what, I’ll make it up to you.”

“How exactly-  _Rin_ ,” Haru objects, not nearly as unwilling as he’s trying to sound. “Makoto is inside.”

“You don’t know that,” Rin replies, unabashed, but he must relent because there’s only a quick smacking sound before the lock turns and Haru emerges, scrubbing absently at his cheek before pausing when their eyes meet.

“Oh, hello,” Makoto says, chipper, and tries hard not to look like an accidental voyeur. “I was just about to go.”

“Hey, Makoto,” Rin says, with the utmost casualness, running his fingers through damp hair. “Sleep well?”

“Ah, yes, thank you,” Makoto says, clearing his throat. “I, ah. Sorry for falling asleep here. I think the post-exam fatigue sort of hit me harder than I expected.”

“It’s fine,” Haru dismisses, drifting towards the kitchen. “Are you leaving now?”

“Yeah, I should probably go change,” Makoto confirms, a touch wryly. “I feel sort of gross.”

“Well, I’m glad I caught you before I left,” Rin says, rapping him on the shoulder with his knuckles. “Your summer camp thing starts next week, right? If you’re not busy we should try and organise something with the other Iwatobi dorks.”

“That’d be nice,” Makoto agrees. “I never got around to asking, but apart from the summer tournament, do you have much planned this month?”

“Not really,” Rin says, glancing towards Haru before refocusing. “I was thinking about doing some travelling, I guess. Haven’t really seen much of Japan lately.”

“Right,” Makoto says, and wonders with some despair how in the hell it took him this long to see things for what they are. “Well. Let me know about this week, then? And congratulations again, the both of you- I’ll be cheering you on for your next races.”

They echo their thanks as he slings his backpack over his shoulders, Haru still scrupulously avoiding eye contact. The first thing he does upon leaving their apartment is bring his phone to his ear.

“Ah, Makoto-kun?”

“Hinata,” Makoto manages, “Just how long have you thought Rin and Haru were dating?”

** vi. ebb and flow **

He is both a little sad and very happy about it, in the end. 

He wouldn’t change it, of course, never once- even if they weren’t his best friends, even if they weren’t so very visibly happy, the kind of sad he feels about it isn’t the kind he minds, a low twisting melancholy that comes naturally to him. It’s hard, he thinks, for anyone not to feel a little sad watching them together, a quiet unplaceable sadness just as easily caused by a particularly lovely beach-front sunset, born of witnessing something that reminds the viewer unshakeably of their own fragile humanity. He’s seen it in other people’s eyes- Rei’s, watching them in the relay, Gou, sitting poolside, Ikuya, watching Haru, Sousuke, watching Rin. Haru and Rin only ever approach it when watching one another.

It’s the kind of low buzz he couldn’t shake if he tried. He doesn’t know that he would if he could.

He is happy far more than he is sad. Happy because his friends are happy, because they are, blatantly, even through the fights and frustrations; happy because he gets to be there, at the resolution of one chapter, at the dawn of another, keeping watch, seeing them grow. Gets to see Haru, who he has known for all his life, who he knows better than he will ever know anyone, smile in a thousand ways he never would before, swim with grace  and drive, fix his gaze on the world around him more often than not. Gets to catch him with impossibly soft eyes sometimes, gets to smile knowingly and watch him flush, imperceptible but pleased. Gets to startle again and again at the small things he never imagined he’d see, casually hooked ankles and traded shirts, sketchbooks filled like they haven’t been in years, the smell of steak drifting through Haru’s kitchen. 

It’s good, too, when it’s not so abstractly, dramatically romantic, when Haru and Rin are as ridiculous as they’ve always been. He listens patiently to unbelievably petty grievances and somewhat more patiently to Haru’s stony silences and Rin’s dramatic door-slamming, pointedly does not listen whenever reconciliation follows. Smiles and drowns out Nagisa and Rei’s respectively enthused and mortified yelling when they inevitably catch Rin and Haru in the act. Laughs internally at Rin’s incurable blushing and Haru’s telling bouts of muteness. They are just as difficult and easy to be friends with as they have always been, even now that Makoto is being called in to mediate arguments about who should hang up calls first instead of trying to convince Haru to join the relay team.

“Makoto,” Rin will groan, on the phone, calling between classes, “He can’t do this much sprinting if his time for the 200 is still behind by a second, seriously, if he just sticks to the damn jogging route-“

Makoto will hum, and inform Rin that he really has no bearing on Haru’s choices, and Rin will ignore this and stop complaining long enough to get an update on his life, usually ask about his girlfriend, whom he suspects of talking to Rin almost as often as he does. Then he will decide whether or not to repeat Rin’s advice to Haru, depending on his mood, and receive the same reaction either way: mutinous avoidance tempered by the fact all three of them know that the end result of these arguments is eternally the same. Haru will do as he likes so long as it doesn’t directly contradict any of their shared goals, and neither of them will ever accept this without putting up a fight.

“I think they like arguing,” Ai Nitori had observed to himself once, at a swim meet, in tones of dawning comprehension. Understatement of the fucking century, Makoto had thought, in distinctly Rin-like tones. Nowadays he sort of wishes he knew this a little less explicitly.

That particular evolution means the joke is on him a lot more than it used to be, which perhaps restores some balance between the three of them but does not make him particularly appreciative for it. It should be impossible for him to feel so violated by two people whose career involves wearing speedos and nothing else, but as it turns out month-long absences do no wonders for Rin and Haru’s sense of propriety; he has lost track of the amount of times he has back-tracked sputtering out of a room. To make matters worse, Haru at least seems to have decided that for his pains Makoto is in charge of damage control where this sort of thing is concerned, which means that when Haru shows up to his first pre-term swim with his course friends, it befalls Makoto to blanch when Asahi whistles loudly and goes: “Holy shit, Nanase, were you mauled by a  shark ?”

Haru, whom Makoto loves dearly and only very rarely desires to drown, blinks once at the frankly horrendous state of his neck, chest, and thighs, then looks blankly at Asahi. 

“Sharks are very misrepresented animals.”

“He fell off his surfboard,” Makoto rushes, fighting the urge to scream as Haru promptly dives into the water. “Cliff-side. He’s kind of sore about it.”

There is a moment of disbelieving silence, wherein Makoto smiles very hard at potential future Olympians and watches them all slowly look away, questions dying in their throat.

“Ow,” Asahi says, finally, sympathetic, and slinks off into the water. Ikuya looks like he may have a conniption.

They do attempt to be somewhat subtle about it, but, again, speedos, and- teeth, so when Rin’s next visit comes around and Haru returns to the pool rather less unblemished than he had been before the weekend, the other swimmers just turn a blind eye as Makoto attempts to look his best friend since childhood in the eye without blushing. 

“Do you have to be so bitey?” Sousuke asks, at some point down the line, shameless, to which Rin both smacks him in the face and turns a furious red as everyone else chokes and looks away, Haru excluded. 

“Mind your own damn business.”

“It’s kind of public domain by this point.”

“Rin filed his teeth when he was a kid to look tough,” Haru supplies, which makes Rin sputter indignantly. “It’s normal that they’re sharp.”

“That’s not even true! You guys just pretend like it is! And anyways it’s not like I’m some kind of depraved animal, I  try to be careful and then  _you_ -”

“This place is lovely, Gou,” Makoto says, very loudly, as she stares in horrified fascination at her brother. “What a nice drinks selection.”

“Spoilsport,” Nagisa huffs. 

He tolerates the mortification with relative grace, sending nightly prayers to Haru’s neighbours and whoever will room with them at the Olympics, and firmly represses any visuals he may have accumulated over the past few months to a deep dark recess of his mind. There are some boundaries you just do not cross if you want to keep your sanity.

People ask, every so often, if he feels replaced, more left out than ever, and his answer is always no, though it varies in scope. It’s a question he’s considered in his own time, across the years.

He doesn’t feel replaced, this much he knows. From the day Makoto met Haru he was always second to the water, and he’d accepted this hierarchy gracefully because it wasn’t a spot he could compete for. Rin is much the same, though Makoto honestly doesn’t know what Haru would do if he ever had to choose between his first love and his most inevitable. He thinks Rin and the water are sort of irrevocably interlinked, somewhere in the confines of Haru’s mind, swimming the permanent anchor between them. In any event Rin has never once fought Makoto for his place in Haru’s life- has always determinedly set his sights on far more, because Rin is kind of terrible and kind of wonderful like that. He thinks maybe if he’d come to want that sort of thing he’d have been quite happy living unperturbed with Haru, but it’s almost unthinkable to imagine the two of them absent Rin, even with all the years they factually were. So he’s never begrudged Rin what he wanted (what he has), save maybe sometimes that he manages to do what Makoto never can nor could. The same is true where Haru is concerned, of course, because Rin has always been fiercely friendly to Makoto and besotted with Haru, and even if Makoto had allowed himself to be caught in his tide he would never have expected things to work out any differently. 

Feeling left out is a different matter. If he is honest, the answer has to be yes, at least a little; this much is not news either. He had felt it at twelve watching Rin and Haru race, watching Haru watch Rin, watching Rin watch Haru, knowing gut-deep that this- whatever it was- was not something he could partake in. It is no surprise that all these years later, with the unspoken between them actualised, there remain moments like these- times where he watches, and could not do more than watch even if he tried. It’s the little things: Rin, absently reaching for Haru’s hand without doubting that he’ll grasp it, fingers interlacing as they keep pace, or Haru, carelessly confident that when he deviates course from the group without a look back Rin will chase after him into the waves, heedless of the salt and sand he’ll complain about for the rest of the day. The way they look at each other when they think no one’s watching, or the way they look at each other when they know but don’t care. It’s all dizzyingly emotive and real and raw, and sometimes Makoto aches a little, watching, because he’s not built for that. 

Still, still. Just as he has always felt the invisible fish-hook threads slip through his fingers around them, so too this feeling has always been fleeting. Haru is his best friend first and foremost, and were Makoto the jealous type he might pride himself on reading Haru more easily than Rin ever has, to both of their frustrations. (He’s not, which is good, because in return Rin might suggest that this makes it all the more blatant when Haru actively bothers to learn to speak Rin's language.) Tokyo has not changed this, nor has Rin, nor could anything. They learn the city together, add more days to their endless shared history, and it is Haru more than Makoto who clings a little, maybe accepting at last that after university their binary existence cannot continue as it always has. He never says it outright, though he is more forthcoming about their friendship generally, and Makoto is sort of grateful for it, because despite it all he can’t help but fear a future where his weeks are not bookended by Haru taking a bath.

Rin is the one who brings it up, perhaps unsurprisingly, in one of his impromptu phone calls, purportedly to discuss what to get Nagisa for his birthday. 

“I don’t know how he’s going to take it, y’know.”

“Hm?”

“Haru,” Rin elaborates, as if that was what was unclear. “After uni. I’m sure you’ll be a great fucking coach, but it’s not- I mean, you’re not gonna have the required experience, right, so it’s not like they’ll just let Haru take you-“

“Rin,” Makoto interjects,  _get to the point_ firmly implied.  


Rin sighs explosively, does just that.

“There’s no way you’ll be in the same place for long. Not for a while, anyways. Even if we make our first Olympics- it’s really unlikely we’ll even place, so it’ll be years of training and travelling and I just- don’t know if that’s what he signed up for.”

It’s one thing to think it, and another entirely to have it put into words. He can almost visualise Rin wincing into the brief silence that follows.

He swallows, clears his throat. “I’m sure it was sort of implied in the global record-holding thing.”

“Sorry, I didn’t-“ Rin starts, then thinks better of it, to Makoto’s relief. “It’s like- the travel is one thing, but I don’t know if he’ll manage being away from you so much.”

“I’m sure he’ll fare better than I will.”

“No way,” Rin negates, heavy with conviction. “I’m not saying you’re not gonna miss him, obviously, I know you’re gonna miss him, you two are so freakily codependent, but you’re- ugh, rational?”

Beat. “That sounds bad.”

Beat. “Actually, I stand by that, Haru’s a highly irrational person.”

“Well, thanks,” Makoto says, dry but sincere, because in an odd way it reassures him that Rin says this and believes it. “In any event, I don’t think there’s any point worrying about it. Haru’s always been a lot more resilient than people give him credit for. And- he doesn’t need me to look after him.”

“No shit,” Rin replies, easily, because he takes these difficult truths for granted. “That’s not what I meant.I’m worried he’ll decide he refuses to do it and just quit.”

This angle Makoto had not considered, and he blinks, gauging it. “Haru-chan wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t he?” Rin asks, in the tone of someone who has considered this matter at length. “He doesn’t have a track record of taking separation well.”

“Yes, but Rin, that’s  _you_.”

“Exactly,” Rin stresses. “I know circumstances are different and shit, but that was after like- less than a year. Both times. You’ve known each other since- diapers, or whatever. The longest you separate is when one of you goes to take a shit.”

He remembers the way Haru had looked when he’d told him about university, knows Rin is not entirely wrong. Still, though- 

“Haru and I…” Makoto starts, trails off. It’s hard to verbalise this sort of instinctive truth; abruptly he has a lot more sympathy for the two of them. “It’s very different from how it is with the two of you.”

“I’d sure hope it is,” Rin grates. He’s joking, but he does get jealous, so Makoto doesn’t harp on it, focuses on trying to make sense of his thoughts.

“We’ve always sort of- I don’t know, coexisted. We don’t even need to talk much. We just- get each other, I guess. And we have shared a lot of our lives, but I think what makes him special to me is that I know even if we never saw each other again we’d still have that, you know?”

“Kind of,” Rin says, sounding vaguely engrossed, which at least tempers Makoto’s brief and uncharacteristic embarrassment. “You realise it’s going to be fucking hard, right.”

“Yeah,” Makoto nods. “I do. But it’s not going to make us any less close, I think. And Haru knows that too. Even if he doesn’t like it.”

Rin stays quiet a moment, then exhales, a little wry, like he’s laughing at himself for something. “Sorry I’m stealing him away again.”

It’s so Rin to apologise for the oddest things, and Makoto smiles against his phone. “No, I’m glad it’s you. At least you’ve given me advance warning. I’ll be counting on you to tell me how he’s doing.”

“Happy to return the favour,” Rin says, quiet.

Rin’s probably the one who’s changed the most vis a vis Makoto in this whole development. Not so much in his attitude, because Rin’s contradictory moods and passions are as constant as the sea, but in the practicalities. He still calls and texts whenever he makes time for it, but his visits are necessarily spent less touring all of his friends’ places and more parked at Haru’s or the pool, so Makoto sees him less when he’s visiting. He suspects this is more Haru’s fault than Rin, because Rin has always been more happy to engage in a group, and though they are both possessive to a fault Haru is less keen to share. 

There is also a second shift, somewhat adjacent to the former, in that for a time Rin is slightly more awkward around Makoto than he’s been since their original reunion. It only happens when it’s the three of them together, so it takes Makoto a while to even pin it down, but it’s noticeable- tiny unsure glances in his direction, bouts of reservedness, a decrease in his tactile affections. Makoto is honestly lost as to its significance until Haru of all people turns to him abruptly mid-dinner once and tells him to pay no mind to it.

“Rin’s being an idiot.”

“Um. How so?”

“He thinks you might be mad or heartbroken,” Haru says, between bites of mackerel. His gaze is indulgently exasperated. “Because we’re dating now.”

It’s actually the first time Haru confirms this aloud, and Makoto blinks, smiling instinctively before the absurdity of the revelation hits him.

“Wh- what?”

“He hasn’t said anything about it to me so I can’t tell him to stop,” Haru mumbles. Makoto blinks several times in rapid succession.

Actually, he might have expected this from Rin. It’s surely not that he seriously believes Makoto is after Haru like that, or takes exception to their relationship, but more that Rin always expects someone to be hurt when he makes a move, and that he and Haru have sort of inverse talents when it comes to reading Makoto. Haru knows Makoto, and thus knows that he is neither mad nor heartbroken. Rin, on the other hand, is sensitive to his nebulous unhappiness, but fails to delineate said feeling in a way befitting Makoto rather than Rin himself. 

Were their positions reversed, Rin would take them dating like a knife through the chest. This knowledge, Makoto thinks, probably colours his anxieties- makes him struggle to believe that Makoto could  not be secretly devastated by the change. In a weird way it’s sort of sweet, he thinks, and when he realises Haru is still expecting a response he smiles mischievously and says so, watching Haru’s eyes darken in suspicion.

“How are Rin’s paranoid delusions sweet?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Makoto hums. “It’s like he can’t possibly imagine being friends with you without also being in love with you. That’s sort of sweet, isn’t it?”

Haru, bless his soul, goes pink before he glares at him in betrayal. 

After this revelation, he makes a point of reiterating to Rin how things are going well with Hinata, and being so obviously encouraging of him and Haru that it borders on manic, an attitude which ends up being so entertaining he kind of forgets it started as an act. It’s quite charming how quickly it gets to either of them.

Blessedly, either Rin gets the memo or he forgets his concerns, because by the next time he comes around he has returned to form, more embarrassingly enamoured than ever, a feat which Makoto honestly admires him for achieving, after My Shining. 

“Sometimes I feel like I’m living on the outskirts of a K-drama,” Hinata laughs once, when Makoto hangs up the phone. “Matsuoka-kun is such a romantic.”

“Wait until I tell you about the pool of cherry blossoms.”

Her answering beam of disbelieving trepidation would make Rin’s day, Makoto thinks.

It takes Haru and Rin a while to actively tell anyone. Makoto is the only one who knows before that summer, and he keeps the secret, of course, though he sort of expects he won’t have to do so for long. 

Surprisingly, Rin and Haru manage to be pretty discreet, if discreet is the right word. Maybe to the outside world they’re more obvious than he assumed, but in terms of this novel development in their relationship, it’s actually pretty hard to tell anything has changed unless you know them. They keep the PDA non-existent around other people (except, again, Makoto, who seems cursed to permanently walk in on sights better left unseen), and Rin miraculously resists the temptation to start calling Haru pet names or buying him flowers. For the most part, they continue on as they were, and though Nagisa beams loudly in their direction no one else really catches on. 

Rin tells his mother and his sister at some point right before he goes back to Australia, which Makoto only knows because Rin tells him ahead of time and makes him swear not to tell Haru, pale with nerves and resolutely against dragging Haru into it somehow if it goes wrong. Makoto thinks of Rin’s dad and just how much his death has shaped his life, and when Rin makes to leave, spine unflinchingly straight and gaze steely, he drags him into the weightiest hug he can muster, relieved when Rin eventually sags and lets himself be held. 

It goes fine. Makoto sends out a thousand relieved prayers to whatever deities watch over them and watches Rin smile wider and brighter than he has in nearly a decade in the aftermath. Haru is mildly annoyed at him for not having said anything, but it’s blatantly superseded by his own relief on Rin’s behalf, and he spends that evening giving him undisguised soft looks and brushing their hands together, which Makoto finds adorable enough not to comment upon. 

Gou finds him the next day as they gather by the pool, and they exchange a look before she sticks out a hand, business-like, which he shakes with some bemusement.

“In-laws now,” Gou declares, retracting her hand; Makoto stares at her in surprise, then smiles widely.

“It’s an honour.”

“It’s a pity I can’t go threaten Haruka-senpai,” Gou sighs, hopping up on the wall beside him. “It would serve nii-san right for always intimidating the boys away.”

“You could try,” Makoto offers, amused. “I’m sure he’d let you.”

“That takes all the fun out of it,” Gou complains, entirely Rin-like. “And anyways there’s no point. He’d never hurt Rin on purpose.”

These Matsuokas and their knack for casually stating such fundamental truths. Makoto shakes his head, humours her some more. “Then you could threaten to cry if they break up, maybe.”

“Useless,” Gou sighs, melodramatic. “Haruka-senpai’s impervious to tears, for one, and for another nii-san has pretty much got dibs on that card.”

Makoto stifles a laugh that makes Rei eye them suspiciously. “Then I’m out of ideas.”

“It’s so unfair,” Gou says, shaking her head. “The one thing I could hold over his head, and now he’s actually gone and confessed his undying love to Haruka-senpai. Plus they’re  so cute. If I ever get married I’m gonna be outshined by my Olympian brother  and his Olympian boyfriend.”

She says it so easily, begrudging tone belied by the delighted twinkle in her eyes as she watches Rin snap his goggles teasingly, and Makoto feels oddly touched by it for a minute. The world outside- outside of them, outside of their tight-knit groups- can be so harsh; it is good to be home, with these people, with this girl, sharing a secret, caring for one another. 

“It’s good to see you again,” he says, aloud, fondly, and Gou startles a little before she breaks into a smile, pink-cheeked and pleased, red eyes a familiar shiny shade.

“You too.”

They glance back at the water in unison, and Rin spots them, coming up laughing from whatever he and Nagisa are doing, pauses to wave, smile sharp and comfortable. Gou waves back, wrinkles her nose when he dives showily back under the water, zig-zagging to disrupt Haru where he drifts.

“I’m really happy for them,” Gou says, softly, after a beat. Her gaze has gone faraway, and Makoto wonders what it must have been like, living on Rin’s side of things. In a strange way she is his mirror image. 

“So am I.”

She sits there a moment more, day-dreaming, then whips back around, expression between curious and mischievously demanding. “Nii-san tells me your girlfriend is visiting next week.”

Makoto should really be better at recognising the signs by now.

Haru doesn’t tell his parents, as far as Makoto knows. They don’t discuss his parents, save that Haru perfunctorily informs him whenever he hears from them (depressingly, this happens little enough that it matters), and once or twice across middle school Makoto had stayed the night far more often than he should have because he could see loneliness draped over Haru like a second skin. It is little surprise that he doesn’t see fit to inform them of this newest change.

He hears Haru and Rin discuss it once, late, sat on the beach some distance away from the rest of them in the last days before everyone clears out of Iwatobi. Rin doesn’t press, but he asks, and Haru is quiet but not defensive, verbally open in a way that makes Makoto’s heart sit in his throat with something like fear but not quite.

“If they don’t matter then that’s fine,” Rin says, at some stage, fingers sifting rhythmically through the sand. “But if they do then we’ll do it together, all right?”

“You told your family without me,” Haru says, without heat. Rin flicks sand at him.

“I told my dad with you.”

This makes Haru go silent, and when Makoto shifts to avoid the midges humming around him he catches a glimpse of him leaning into Rin’s shoulder, gaze on the roiling waves. 

“They don’t matter.”

“Fine,” Rin says, still quiet, and seems content to leave it at that, rhythmic sifting recommencing anew. Minutes pass before Haru shifts, straightening to rearrange his shirt, and then he pauses mid-movement, glances back at the water.

“When I tell my grandmother.”

“Haru?”

“You can come then.”

And this, Makoto thinks, listening to the waves wash by with little fear in his heart, is how things should be. Haruka’s grandmother would have found Rin just as disarmingly likeable as her grandson does.

For the others, it comes incrementally. Haru complains to him once that Rin has too many people to tell, but from what Makoto deduces he is referring to Rin’s two living relatives, deceased father, and foster family, so in actuality those in the know are few and far between. 

Nagisa asks outright, their last day together before university resumes, and Haru sits there silently for a moment before he sighs a little and inclines his head.

“You can tell Rei too. But- Nagisa- you can’t spread this around, all right?”

“Who do you take me for?” Nagisa asks, impish, smile dimming when Haru meets his gaze with sudden severity.

“I’m serious. No telling anyone else.”

And Nagisa, contrary to all expectations, only nods, expression gone oddly serious. “I know, I know.”

Haru considers him for a second before relaxing, familiar neutrality sliding into place as Nagisa resumes beaming.

“Oh, this is the best news. I totally called it. I called it before everyone. I bet I called it long before I either of you! When did you know? No, don’t tell me. Australia? It’s totally Australia, right?”

“Nagisa,” Haru mutters, but he’s smiling faintly when Nagisa crushes him in an excited hug, bouncing on the soles of his feet.

“I think this may be the best day of my life. Can I be man of honour at the wedding? No, ring-bearer! No, flower-boy!”

“We’re not getting married,” Haru grumbles, extricating himself difficultly from Nagisa’s distracted grip. Nagisa pauses in his planning to scoff.

“It’s  _Rin_. You think he hasn’t had a venue planned since he met you?”

Charmingly, Haru’s ears turn red.

Sousuke learns at some undetermined point, reacting only with rude disbelief at the fact things hadn’t happened sooner, and by the next time Makoto crosses paths with Nitori he too is gushing about Rin-senpai’s relationship. 

“I’m so glad they’ve worked things out,” are his horrifying words of wisdom. “Sharing a dorm with Rin-senpai could get pretty intense.”

The other swimmers put two and two together at some point over the next year, he imagines, given the shark bites. They are expectedly relaxed about it, except for the usual suspects. When Rin comes over for Christmas break Makoto swears Ikuya tries to murder him at least thrice.

Unfortunately for Ikuya, Rin thrives under negative attention; years of exposure to Haru and Sousuke have made him adept at cracking even the toughest exterior. It is thus little surprise when he somehow manages to convert him before the holiday ends. 

Makoto, tragically, is still in exams during The Event, but Sousuke (mysteriously present once more, although now at least with the excuse of being a swimmer again) and somewhat mystifyingly Hinata (invited by Rin) recap the whole debacle rather courteously for him. According to Sousuke, when Haru ‘vanished to fuck a sink’ (per Hinata: went to wash his shirt after Hiyori ‘accidentally’ spilt a drink on it), Rin ‘got stuck with the intense emo kid’ (ended up alone in a booth with Ikuya), and before Ikuya could ‘try to club him to death with a salt-shaker or some shit’ (fairly accurate assessment actually), Rin somehow engaged him in conversation. 

Fast forward five minutes and Rin had progressed to some in-depth technical swimming discussion that Ikuya begrudgingly contributed to. Fast forward ten and Rin had started recounting his brother’s most embarrassing swimming incidents, to Ikuya’s reluctant fascination. Fast forward twenty, and Rin had somehow segued into recounting how he’d first dragged Haru into swimming competitively, both Hinata and Sousuke now actively eaves-dropping (the former out of ‘pure ugly curiosity’, the latter ‘in case shit got real’). By some inexplicable miracle, his enthusiastic handwaving and passionate retelling of Haru’s first race did not send Ikuya into fits of icy rage; instead, by the time Haru returned to the table, having been side-tracked by a series of unfortunate events, Rin had somehow managed to get Ikuya to recount their relay days, laughing delightedly at Haru’s antics. At this point, Hinata informs him, Hiyori seemed seconds away from stabbing Rin in the neck with a cocktail umbrella. 

“I’m not surprised,” Haru says, when he is finally interrogated on the subject. “Rin is annoying like that.”

“Like how?”

“People like him,” Haru says, simply, though his gaze flickers tellingly to his phone, like he can see right through to Australia. 

Nagisa complains that he’s being coy; Makoto, though, thinks Haru has quite succinctly summarised the story of their lives. It’s a truth that Makoto has found to be universal, in the end: people like Rin. In a different but parallel way, people like Haru. It is almost impossible not to like them, and, simultaneously, it’s a cornerstone of their relationship that they are both completely aware of this fact only in relation to one another. 

_Romantic, right?_

** vii. currents **

Almost twenty years since they met, Makoto still remembers the moment he first lay eyes upon Haruka Nanase. If he focuses he swears he could reinvent the feeling of his fingers clenched shyly in his mother’s skirt, the shuffle of his feet against the floor. He doesn’t need to focus to remember Haru’s face, the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, looking firmly elsewhere.

He’s not sure Haru recalls the moment. It’s fairly plausible that he does not, and just accepts Makoto as a timeless fixture in his life, with no clear origin of appearance. On the other hand, Haru has a crystalline memory; he remembers far more than he lets on, which is apparent in his knack for immediately tracing any reaction of Makoto’s to some fitting childhood incident without batting an eye. 

If he does remember, he wonders what exactly it was like from his side of things. It does no good to compare, but he doubts Haru was as struck by him as he was by Haru. It’s not a personal affront: Haru staunchly ignored even Rin upon his first appearance in their lives, and Rin is far more compelling a character than he is. 

Struck is the right word for how he felt, though, all those years ago. Struck by that aura Haru has, struck by his silence, struck by his sea-like gaze. In his mind the memory has conflated somewhat with the first time he ever saw Haru in the water, a kind of intensely curious awe. He’d questioned timidly if his mother might have been incorrect in assuring him they’d make good friends. She’d only laughed. 

Though the current venue would hardly fit in their middle school, as he watches Haru swim lazy laps around the empty pool, his own back flat against the cool wall, he thinks they could be any iteration of themselves, Makoto and Haru at twelve, at sixteen, at nineteen. Constancy is their DNA. He couldn’t count all the days spent just like this, himself watching, Haru floating. 

Most days Haru chooses to ignore Makoto’s obvious inner monologuing; today he comes to a halt half a lane away, lifts his head to give Makoto a questioning gaze. Makoto just shakes his head, waves him away. They can talk later; Haru is itching for some time to unwind. 

He’s not sure he’ll mention the route his thoughts have taken. Haru and nostalgia have a peculiar relationship, is the thing, one he’s not always keen on retreading. Even nowadays he is generally unlikely to think about anything but the present, unenthusiastic about dwelling on things long past- but he is also the one typically most reluctant to let go, still keeps his fraying Iwa-chan mascot strapped firmly to his swimming bag years after graduating. 

Haru is at his most nostalgic like this, Makoto thinks- drifting in the water, aimless, content. It would be hard to describe Haru as any of these things in current circumstances.

It’s hard not to miss the old days, sometimes. He has always found it impossible not to yearn somewhat wryly for simpler times, despite rational awareness that the past is both long gone and never so rose-tinged as it is remembered to have been. It's just that at their core, he and Haru always had each other, and though this is gospel truth it is a little harder to remember nowadays.

They live apart, for the first year of their lives- not just doors away but cities, even countries depending on the month. Makoto was made for silent adjustment, but even so there are days where he catches himself midway out of the door absently prepared to knock on Haru’s door, some overlay of memories lulling him into complacency. The reminder of his absence never fails to sour his morning, despite his best intentions; in the early days especially it makes him distracted, twitchy, morbid. 

It’s hard, living apart. More than ever he pities Rin for his first time in Australia, imagining him so small and so lonely in a foreign land, too proud to say so. For his part he is not lonely exactly; he has other people around him, a busy life, and he speaks to Haru as much as he can. Distance makes a difference nonetheless, puts spaces where there were none, leaves silences in Haru’s wake. Two decades of friendship, and so much of it spent living in each other’s pocket- unlearning that instinctive closeness hurts, all the more so because he hadn’t really noticed it was there until it was gone.

He can’t go to every race; this too stings, because he would like nothing more than to sit as he has always sat, cheering loudly from the sidelines, watch the water part ahead of Haru like magic. But their lives have diverged since, for better and for worse, and so often he only gets results hours later, off-kilter, good wishes or commiserations two steps behind. In early days he had tried very hard to make the time to check every result when it came out, but Haru swims so often and so globally that half of the time his races are in the middle of the night, and he’d given up on setting alarms when he’d found himself spending nights unable to fall back asleep, staring at his phone, caught on whatever reply he’d received, trying to conjure Haru into the room.

Rin had warned him it would be hard, of course. He understands his impulse to apologise better now- not because he has come to want an apology, but because the way things are sort of merits some guilt, on the universe’s part at least, for not letting Haru have it all his way.

He wonders if Rin has apologised to Haru for it, or just to Makoto. He’s not sure who would take it worse.

At the start- not at the very start, when things had been new and strange enough for them to feel impermanent, when some part of Makoto had been unable to register that this was to be his new normal, but in the following months, when reality had finally sunk in- Haru had proved unsurprisingly unhappy with the shift, unsettled and showing it through the same blend of irritability and withdrawal that Makoto has come to expect from him in these chapters of sudden and violent change. 

Makoto hadn’t borne the brunt of it. If anything, Haru had been more accommodating than ever with him, in a flighty sort of way: taking calls, pointedly reactive to his stories, texting him sporadically with uncharacteristically verbose recountings of his week. In fact his tentativeness had almost made the whole thing worse- both because it made him all the more present a ghost, and because it made Makoto startlingly afraid that he had been wrong in thinking things would not change between them. 

Rin, he suspects, was the one most subjected to Haru’s changing moods, though unlike some of their other friends (Sousuke most of all, surprising no one) he doubts that Haru will have spent three months putting him through the wringer out of some kind of belated betrayal: the only times Haru had seemed completely at ease during those early days were when he was swimming, and especially when he was swimming with Rin. He never voiced this explicitly, of course; on call Haru still spoke of swimming with Rin only briefly, bluntly, but his silences characteristically spoke volumes, and besides even the dispassionate lens of the camera at their filmed races couldn’t hide their body language. If there were fights, and inevitably there must have been, Makoto no longer feared them as he once did, watching the two of them grow instinctively more focused, more present, more preemptively victorious by simple virtue of proximity.

Still, he thinks it must have been hard on Rin, that first while. Not even because Haru made it so, but because something in Rin was irreparably twisted a long time ago so his proclivity to take credit for every success could grow into a pathologic inability not to shoulder the brunt of the blame for whatever ill he feels he caused. During those early months away Haru is unhappy, or at least unsure, and Rin was the one who made him leave home, ergo Rin must take responsibility for this unhappiness. Circular logic, and one which Haru has always staunchly opposed, but one Rin has never been dissuaded from following.

Rin looks tired, the first time they have a proper call, two months into their new status quo. Tired, wired; would have called earlier, he says, semi-apologetic, half-attentive. It’s been hectic. Plus, the time zones, the training times. For both of them, now, not just his own. Makoto knows how it is.

Makoto does, but he also knows Rin, his capacity to make the impossible happen. Sousuke, later, will say Rin didn’t call before because he felt that he couldn’t, not before things got better, not before he had something to show for it. Rin in two words: results-oriented. It’s what primarily distinguishes him from Haru, when it comes down to it.

“Haru misses you,” Rin says, dutifully, at some point in the call. “Talks about you all the time.”

“Haru-chan does?”

“Well, not exactly,” Rin amends, hands combing through his hair, ceaselessly moving. “I do. Can’t help myself. Like pressing a nail into an open wound. But he never tells me to shut up, so.”

So, indeed. “I miss him, too,” Makoto says, because he does, of course. “And you.” 

“Hm? Thanks,” Rin says, belated, thoughts elsewhere. “International level is intense. Really crazy. You wouldn’t believe the times on these people. And they’re all- I mean, the  Americans . Haru can’t stand them, big surprise there. I guess one or two of them aren’t that bad, when it comes down to it- and you can’t deny their times, obviously- but god, they’re loud. You know?”

Makoto doesn’t, having never met an American himself, or at least not one like Rin means. He doesn’t think this matters.

“The swimming, though, it’s…” Rin trails off. “Well, you’ve been watching. Not every race. That’d be- but mostly. So fucking good. Drives me crazy, some days.”

“He looks good,” Makoto chimes in, carefully, feeling a little whiplash. It’s reassuring, in a way, to hear Rin like this, a little disjointed, talking to himself, profoundly Rin-like in his priorities, none of the odd politeness Haru’s communications have carried of late. 

“Haru? Yeah,” Rin says, hand stilling for a moment, gaze flicking to him properly. “He- his form is great. All the cardio and shit. Though course if you ask him it’s just happened of its own volition.”

“I can imagine,” Makoto says, smiling instinctively. It catches Rin’s eye, makes him shift before resuming his fidgeting. 

“It’ll be worth it, in the end.”

“I’m sure he knows that too,” Makoto says, meaning the jogging, then feeling stupid for it when Rin stops moving for good to look at him like he’s started speaking Spanish. 

His first calls with Haru had been just as bad, but then he can’t see how they wouldn’t have been. At times it felt all right, Haru quietly emotive and his enthusiasm audible even through the veneer of distance as they spoke, and then Makoto would miss him so much it felt like he was missing a lung, wanting nothing more than to see him in the flesh, to watch him drift around the room. Other times weren’t so good, Haru antsy and moody and even more resistant to small talk than he usually was.

“This was stupid,” Haru says, during one such call, interrupting Makoto mid-sentence. His eyes are a fierce marine, his jaw set hard. 

“Haru-chan?”

“You’re not happy,” Haru says, flat. “I’m coming back.”

Makoto stares for a moment, caught off guard, half focused on how Haru could tell, even through his jovial retelling of his latest swimming class. Then he sputters, chest tightening with worry. 

“Haru-chan! You can’t- what are you saying? I’m fine!”

“You’re not happy,” Haru repeats, except this time it also sounds like he’s saying  _I’m not happy_. This is enough of a secret and unfounded concern of Makoto’s- Haru miserable, cooped up in Sweden or something, too stubborn to concede defeat to Rin- that he hesitates in his rebuke, and Haru seizes the opening for what it is, more determinedly removed by the second. “This isn’t working. So I’ll come back.”

“Wh- you can’t do that,” Makoto interjects, coming to his senses; when Haru’s gaze grows no less obstinate he inhales, settles himself, refocuses. “Haru- what will you  _do_?”

This throws him for an instant, eyes flickering somewhere off-screen, then he purses his lips. “I’ll work with you. I can teach too.”

“Well,” Makoto pauses, thinking of Rei, before shaking his head, less unsteady now. The mental image of Haru trying to coach children, adorable though it may be, is also funny in a hysterical way, enough to bring him back to reality. “I’m sure Haru-chan could do whatever he put his mind to. But I don’t quite think you’d enjoy watching other people swim without you.”

“Then I’ll swim locally,” Haru counters. “I have money.”

Years ago, maybe, Makoto might have bought it. A pile of medals and the sharp-toothed man who owns the matching set lies between then and now, though; he shakes his head. 

“You’re where you should be.” When Haru looks liable to protest: “You’re where you want to be, too. You always complain the first while.”

“You’re not happy,” Haru repeats, after a beat, still intense but less single-minded now. Makoto sighs, inclines his head a little. Rin’s trick: a little honesty goes a long way.

“No, not always. I miss you. But I’m not unhappy. Work is going well. I have people here for me. And it makes me happy to see you swim.”

Haru frowns, but some of the fight has gone out of him. “You shouldn’t stay up to watch.”

“I don’t,” Makoto deflects. “Not anymore. But, you know- Gou-chan said to me, a while ago, that she watches the races whenever she has the time, and it doesn’t matter if it was there or two hours later or a year. She saw it; she was there too. So whenever I watch now, I feel like I saw it happen.”

It takes Haru a moment, then he loosens, terseness gone, looking tired and young and unsure. 

“It’d be better if you really did.”

“It would. But I can’t, not right now. And you shouldn’t come back.”

To his happy surprise, Haru smiles at this, corner of his mouth twitching in defeat. “They should have the Olympics more often.”

For all his talk of the Olympics as the finish line, there’s a gleam in his eyes when he says the word. Makoto would bet it’s not dissimilar from the way he looked that day down in Sydney, finally seeing something big.

(Haru, briefly here, briefly present, getting out of the pool in one fluid movement: “Stop thinking so loudly.”

Makoto, caught out, smiling: “Sorry. I got nostalgic sitting here, watching you swim. We’ve spent a lot of time like this together, huh?”

Haru, quiet, eyes searching, towelling his hair: “We’re together now.”

His flight for Paris leaves in six hours, Makoto thinks. Still- still.

“Ah, well, since we are- shall we go see that pond I’ve been telling you about?”

Later when he returns to his empty apartment he will find a pastel sketch of the pond slid under his doorstep, unsigned, and carefully wipe at his eyes before the colours can smudge.

Paris, then London, then Oslo. Haru isn’t coming home for the holidays.)

Even during the unhappy days, he never doubts that things will get better, mostly out of pragmatism. Inevitably, they have- living apart hasn’t gotten any easier, or more pleasant, but he’s gotten used to it; it hurts less. Time heals all wounds- a cliché, but true, as most clichés are. Haru calls less, no longer frantic to keep communication going, but when he does he is nothing but himself, annoyed at the poor connection but happy to see him, listening quietly to his stories and contributing little verbally except when Rin emerges to egg him on. It feels like them, even though it’s not the kind of them they’re used to; Makoto can handle that. Little by little his life regains balance.

Haru, too, is happy. Chicken and egg- each of their friends has different takes on whose mood influenced whose; Makoto thinks it’s more likely that the natural progression of time got both of them to relax as the months passed, that they fed on each other’s improving moods. He can’t deny that it helps, seeing Haru happy, the return of the glint in his eyes, the soft smiles he suppresses, the not so off-handed way he mentions his latest wins. He has always taken the greatest pleasure in seeing Haru happy, and even all these years later there is something about it that Makoto cherishes tremendously, without being able to put the feeling into words- with the distance added between them, it feels like it counts for more. 

“Whipped,” Sousuke grouses, eternal hypocrite that he is, whenever he happens to catch Makoto post-call. Makoto never grants him a response.

When Haru is happy, Rin inevitably is too, and between the two of them Makoto is able to to swallow his stinging bouts of jealous loneliness with ease, too fond and proud to listen to the whispers in his head. 

“You should come up for Christmas,” Rin says, on screen, chopsticks scraping against the bottom of his bowl. “Oi, Haru, this is good! Try yours!”

Haru replies something vaguely inaudible; Makoto smiles as Rin rolls his eyes.

“What was I- right, anyway. You’d love Norway- looks just like a Western fairytale, you know, all snowy and bright and big. They have these tiny colourful houses- Haru sent you that drawing, right? I keep telling him to buy postage at the airport so all his letters aren’t so late…”

“It’s a hassle,” Haru grumbles, still off-screen but closer now. 

“I told you, if you don’t have the right currency you can just ask,” Rin retorts, shaking his head. “So, Christmas?”

“Ah,” Makoto says, a little wistful, “I wish I could, but my family-“

“Haru’s making a  told you so face at me,” Rin says. 

“Your parents won’t mind if you miss a bit of the festivities,” Haru says, finally appearing as a pair of legs in Rin’s vicinity. “Just come for a week.”

“We’ll sponsor you,” Rin grins, “Since we’re raking it in and all.”

“I- I’d need to check times,” Makoto says, a little blind-sided. “I guess I- for a little while, if I wouldn’t be bothering you?”

“You wouldn’t,” Haru’s legs say, staunchly. Rin snorts, presumably wraps an arm around Haru’s waist to drag him down, because then Haru folds to sit, expression not so impassive as he eyes the screen determinedly.

“Then maybe,” Makoto concedes, laughing sheepishly when Rin punches the air and Haru gives a satisfied huff. “No promises!”

“Told you he’d cave.”

“Mh. This isn’t bad,” Haru notes, chewing pensively on the remnants of Rin’s rice. 

“You’re so fucking rude. I said try yours.”

“You can have some of mine then,” Haru shrugs, a hint of mischief beneath his unruffled veneer as he holds out a bite for Rin to take, the latter obliging mutinously.

“Is that Norwegian food you’re eating?”

“Health food,” Haru negates, wrestling his chopsticks back from Rin. “It has no nationality.”

“Package says made in Sweden,” Rin counters, grinning irrepressibly when Haru huffs and swats him away. “Nordic food is pretty heavy. Not really swimming stuff.”

“You ate fine when we were in Paris.”

“You can’t be in France and not  eat, ” Rin protests. To Makoto: “Haru was convinced we’d be eating snails.”

Haru neither confirms nor denies these accusations; Makoto laughs. “I don’t think I could have handled that either.”

“Tell you what, though,” Rin says, pensive now, “I prefer the Scandinavian countries, at least in terms of language; speaking English in France was a nightmare.”

“The accents?”

“Incomprehensible,” Rin confirms. “And they couldn’t understand me half the time. Guess Japanese-Australian isn’t so easy on the ear.”

“My accent’s just the watered down version of yours,” Haru notes, between bites. “Could be worse.”

Makoto’s English has always been better than Haru’s solely due to the latter’s profound disinterest in the subject; he can still ruefully recall the few occasions in which Haru, piqued by some Rin-related urge to understand, abruptly focused on their classes and rapidly surpassed his rudimentary attempts. His attempt to tactfully voice this concern is thoroughly trashed.

“You’re not meeting the Queen of England,” Rin scoffs, leaning back. “We’ll be speaking Japanese for ninety percent of the trip if Nanase has his way.”

“ _M_ _atsuoka_ can do the translating.”

“That’d be nice of you,” Makoto interjects, before another bout of bickering can arise. Both Rin and Haru look mildly disappointed at the interruption, so he follows it up with capitulation: “I’ll look into flight prices.”

The victorious look he gets for this makes him briefly and intently sympathise with whatever poor souls are so unfortunate as to swim alongside them.

Nearly twenty years since he’d first laid eyes on Haru, Makoto finds himself halfway across the world with his knuckles tensed against the armrest as he watches the clouds pass by. He’s a poor flier, as it turns out, near hyper-ventilation for much of the flight; can’t help but think of his friends in contrast. Rin is so used to international travel that he treats plane rides with the kind of blasé attitude he’d use on a bus, and Haru can sleep anywhere, which makes them far better travel partners than someone who spends landing and takeoff with his face inside a paper bag.

(Haru, later, will blink disbelievingly at him when he utters this thought: “You forget we’re travelling  _together_ , Makoto.”)

It is nearly twenty years since he has known Haru; he is still the only person who Makoto wouldn’t hesitate to get onto a day-long flight into the unknown for. It is roughly ten since he has known Rin; he is still the only person who would ask Makoto to do such a thing in the first place. Something like symmetry, too intricate and uncannily poetic to be properly processed.

Makoto is incredibly biased where they are concerned, he knows. Of course he knows. He has spent almost twenty years watching Haru with stars in his eyes and nerves binding his lungs. He has spent half this time trying to keep pace with Rin as he made an ocean out of a lake. But he thinks, somewhere deep down, he knows them about as well as anyone can- sees them about as fairly as anyone could. It is this clarity of vision that he trusts when he feels- deeply, instinctively- that things will always work out for them.

This is the thing, with Rin and Haru: despite it all, despite the fact they each have the gravitational force of a sun, despite the public fascination of their push and pull, they are intensely private. The aftershocks might reach the outside world, but what they are to each other, for better or worse, they have always managed to express behind closed doors. Thus despite the staggering romanticism of their relationship they remain almost perplexingly low on PDA, and despite the constant friction of their personalities Makoto has only ever witnessed them fighting once. 

“ _Once_? ” Sousuke asks, some other time, heavy with skepticism. “Them? Give me a break.”

Makoto shrugs, a little tipsy, feeling ill-equipped to explain. “I don’t mean- bickering, or- arguing. I mean fighting.”

“Door-slamming,” Nagisa adds, helpful, from where he is draped over a snoring Rei’s lap.

Sousuke inclines his head, on the same page now, not ceding an inch. “Still- _once_?”

“Well,” Makoto starts, stops. “We’ve caught- you know, the aftermath. That time at the relay. A lot of shouting. But it was over by the time we got there, really.”

For a moment he drifts off into reminiscence, recalling dirt-smeared tracksuits, faded cherry blossom petals, breathless yells and Rin’s voice cracking like thunder. He refocuses.

“I know there have been other fights. At least twice in high school. I wasn’t there for either, but with Haru’s mood after…”

“Oh, yeah, the wall-slamming stuff.”

“Wall-slamming,” Sousuke repeats, flatly.

“And a locker once.”

Makoto handwaves this away, unwilling to investigate the how’s and why’s of Nagisa’s informed state. “I never saw those, though. Only the one.”

“This one’s always saying it’s because they don’t like an audience,” Nagisa chimes in, patting aggressively at Rei’s head. “Which isn’t  _wrong_ , but also Rin-chan is very dramatic and Haru-chan can be just as bad. I think it’s more because all of their fights are so- you know, sickeningly personal.”

And this, Makoto thinks, is correct- explains his serene confidence that the tides will return to shore no matter how unlikely it might seem. With Rin and Haru, every serious rupture  is sickeningly personal; they are eternally unable to pull back or come up for air. Whatever seemingly insurmountable difference of opinion they might have only ever escalates to that point because they are both aware that they share the same basic wants at the end of the day, intrinsically tangled, both too stubborn to kick to the surface so long as the other remains submerged. Swimming free, swimming to win, staying or leaving- in the grand scheme of things, they don’t matter. Rin and Haru will always walk mirrored paths.

The plane touches down, finally, with a jolt, wheels rumbling and his fellow passengers chattering as they prepare to descend. He stands on slightly shaky legs, eyes the snow spiralling downwards as he slides his bag onto his shoulders. Norway. Foreign land. When he steps out of the plane he is overcome by a brief feeling of utter unreality, his feet touching Norwegian tarmac. 

He thinks, as he ambles obediently through the halls, eyes catching on incomprehensible lettering, that though Rin and Haru have had their fair share of doubts, he has long felt this inevitability around them. Not since first meeting, no- not quite, at least, because it had taken a while for Rin to sink in, in all of his earth-shattering presence- but since those early days, yes, so unduly significant for the little time they’d actually spent together. 

It’s funny, that: on paper, Rin spent less than a year as their classmate. If Rin weren’t Rin, Makoto presumes they would never have thought of him again, Haru least of all. But as his early adult life has made so abundantly clear, there is no underestimating the impact of childhood, not least when childhoods are shaped by people with so vivid a presence. In their own ways Rin and Haru have always left fires in their wake, lit sparks and burnt hearts, the strangest collection of people left parched in their absence. 

The baggage carousel spins. His mind goes in circles with it, recovering a memory: late afternoon by the pool, in the early days of their acquaintanceship with Rin, the latter sat perched atop the starting block with his legs dangling in the water as he explains the ins and outs of relay swimming with the utmost wisdom. If he concentrates on the mechanical hum he can almost hear their voices, just audible above the soft splashing, Rin’s carrying loudest as he orates.

He remembers himself hesitantly engrossed, voicing his tentative enthusiasm for the concept. He’d been especially wary of water then, but charmed into considering the idea nonetheless in the face of Rin’s bright-eyed exuberance. In his mind’s eye Rin’s face appears, sharply confident grin in place as he glances to Haru and back, expectant. 

“That does sound fun.”

“It is fun! It’s the best kind of swimming.”

“You don’t prefer racing?”

“Racing’s fun too,” Rin says, frowning in thought before resuming his unfazed pose.  “But relays are better, because you get to swim as a team.”

Abruptly, turning to Haru with what would be neither the first nor the last of his offers:  “C’mon, Nanase, just try it once. You’ll love it, you’ll see.”

When Haru continues swimming as if deaf to his pleas, his expression twists impatiently, eyes flashing with conviction.  “Oi! Nanase!”

“Ah, Haru-chan doesn’t like to-“ Makoto begins, attempting damage control, though for whose sake he isn’t sure. It doesn’t matter: before he can finish speaking Rin has shot to his feet and dived, arching neatly over Haru to land just ahead of him in his lane, making him pull up short with an uncharacteristic lack of grace to avoid a collision.

“It’s rude to ignore people when they’re talking to you, y’know,”  Rin reproaches, emerging ahead.  “So what do you say?”

If Haru was the type to bristle he might have.  “I only swim free.”

Rin, Makoto is beginning to understand, is awfully persistent. “ _Y_ _eah,_ I know! So you can swim the freestyle portion. I don’t mind doing butterfly, I’m good at that too.”

His usual rebuttal rebutted, Haru huffs and lies on his back, staring up at the cloudy skies.  “I won’t swim for you.”

“Why? You’re already super fast, and I’m really good. I could get the others up to scratch. You wouldn’t need to do anything except swim.”

“I don’t race.”

“You’ve never tried,” Rin counters, pulling at his leg so he’s forced off of his back to face him.  “What, are you scared of losing?”

Spark of outrage.  “No.”

“Then there’s no problem, right?” 

Mutinously, Haru dives underwater, shaking off his grasp; Rin remains treading water for a moment before sighing loudly and kicking back to Makoto, who watches him clamber out of the pool with undisguised shock before remembering himself.

“Haru-chan doesn’t mean anything by it, you know! It’s just the way he is.”

Rin only puffs his cheeks and lets out a breath, shaking his head as he watches him swim.  “It’s not.”

For a moment Makoto feels slightly off-kilter:  _does he see something I don’t_? But this is Haru-chan, he remembers, and as such he feels oddly compelled to contest this statement. 

“It’s not- I mean, the water is special to Haru-chan.”

This makes Rin turn towards him, honestly bemused for the first time since Makoto has known him. 

“Huh? Special how?”

“Like,” Makoto starts, losing steam now that the focus is on him. He doesn’t know how to put it, particularly because Haru rarely bothers to articulate the thought.  “You know, he thinks it’s something to be loved, or- treated well, because it’s- free.”

At this Rin cocks his head, brow knitting. 

“Well, I guess. What’s that got to do with not racing?”

“I think- if you’re racing, it’s like you’re using the water, or, or-“ Makoto tries, feeling out of his depth as he glances towards Haru, now drifting up and down the pool unfazed.  “Beat it, maybe.”

Rin looks at him for a moment, then looks back to Haru, who is staring fixedly at nothing in particular. 

“That’s stupid.”

Haru’s eyes flash to him in offence; Rin gets to his feet, hands on his hips.

“Obviously water is special. If it wasn’t I’d be asking you to do some other sport, wouldn’t I? But not wanting to race just because you think that’s using the water- that’s dumb. Why’s that more using the water than what you’re doing? You think the water doesn’t like being used to race? Why’s it have dolphins then?”

He snaps his goggles back on, a definite sound, like a gavel being pounded on those late night crime shows Makoto’s parents won’t let him watch. 

“If that’s your problem, Nanase, then there’s no problem at all. You really think the water is mad at me swimming?” A bright grin, his feet falling into position.  “Watch me and tell me if it looks mad.”

It took much more fighting, wheedling, and pressuring than that to convince Haru, of course. He had resolutely refused to respond to any of Rin’s baiting for what felt like a week afterwards. Makoto remembers, though, watching the water part cleanly for him, a flash of red hair coursing through the pool, and knowing then that there would be a relay after all, and that Haru would swim in it, and, consequently, that he should ask his mother for a new pair of goggles.

Maybe he couldn’t have known, then, what he feels like he did. Maybe his experience of Rin and Haru since has coloured his memories of Rin and Haru then. But he remembers that moment so clearly, water up to his ankles, pool awash with movement, and an acute sensation of significance, the newfound certainty that there was something different about Rin the way there was about Haru, and that this was something the two of them would share without him. It’s funny: thinking back now he remembers feeling briefly blind-sided, because if Rin had been abundantly obvious in his awareness of this, Haru had certainly not, and though in retrospect he thinks it entirely possible that he had simply been either oblivious or resistant to the idea, in the moment it had felt like he was keeping secrets.

At the end of the day, though, this is what he knows: despite everything, Rin and Haru are just people. Special people, maybe, once in a lifetime kind of people, or maybe not- maybe just exceptional to a small-town kid with little by way of comparison. People, though, in all of their flawed charms, and people he loves dearly. All of his philosophising and scrutiny has never stayed the course of their lives, but he has some staying power in them- not all-encompassing, maybe not quite even-footed, but enough. 

Twenty years. Ten. He wheels his luggage after him, tentative in this foreign space, feels a little like the child he’d once been, dipping his toes in the water with Haru, listening carefully to Rin’s diving instructions. Taking the plunge.

He sees them first: side-by-side across the room, Rin’s elbow resting on Haru’s shoulder, debating something or other as they survey the crowd. Somehow he doesn’t expect it to hit like it does, a warm punch to the chest, and he almost knocks into someone just taking them in, overwhelmed with unexpected relief.

Haru’s eyes catch his, his expression shifting as they do, and there is something quiet and welcoming in his gaze, an unspoken affection Makoto has missed terribly. He smiles helplessly, feet accelerating, watches as Haru nudges Rin, eyes still on him but fingers drifting as if to steer Rin forwards, watches Rin alight as he catches sight of him, break the silence with irresistible enthusiasm. 

“Makoto!”

One, two steps, then an armful of Rin, buoyant and familiar as he clasps Makoto’s shoulders, somehow retrieves his suitcase from him in the same movement. Makoto barely has the time to breathe in the smell of him- chlorine, a crisp hint of cologne- before he’s pulled back, a friendly slap to his cheek and a flash of sharp teeth.

“Geez, you’re white as a sheet! Not so big on the planes, huh?”

“Ah, it was fine,” Makoto says, albeit unconvincingly; Rin only snorts, shakes his head.

“Should have known. There’s nothing to be scared of, y’know, you’re more likely to be killed by a meteorite or drown in your bathtub than be in a plane crash.”

“That’s just going to make him worry about bathtubs,” Haru intones, still scrutinising Makoto intently. From him it has all of the warmth of an embrace; Makoto smiles again.

“I can’t believe you guys do this so often.”

“Well, it’s not usually a twelve hour flight,” Rin says, patting his arm sympathetically. “Besides, you get used to it.”

“That’s just you, Rin.”

“Oh, come on, you’re the one who sleeps through half the flight. Really, Makoto, it’ll be less bad the second time around.”

“If you say so,” Makoto replies, privately convinced that no matter how many times he flies he will never feel any less like he’s hurtling through the sky in a fragile metal box. Haru huffs quietly in response, making Rin glance towards him and wrinkle his nose.

“You’d  better  get used to it, since you’ll be flying out to watch us at the Olympics.”

“I’ll make an effort,” Makoto laughs, heartened by the prospect of them all bundled up on a flight- Rei, Nagisa, Gou, Sousuke, though the latter could well be swimming alongside them by then- in Team Japan sweaters, especially heartened by the fact he can imagine it so easily. 

For a moment they just stand there, Rin neatly ripping off his baggage labels as Haru finally reverts his eyes to their default position and Makoto basks in the opportunity to take stock of them, catalogue the changes- a tiny scar above Haru’s eyebrow, Rin’s freshly cut hair, the slight exposure-roughness of their skin- and the familiarity of them. 

“Taxis are down there,” Rin announces, always looking ahead, once he’s crumpled the tags into a ball and thrown them into the nearest bin. “C’mon, we’ll drag you downtown and then you can crash.”

“Whatever you like,” Makoto says, falling into step behind him, and means it, despite his groggy exhaustion. Rin only shakes his head.

“You’ll have to hold out till evening, otherwise the jet lag will be a bitch. But there’s loads to keep you awake until then. Bet you’ll at least try to eat some of the local foods, unlike  _someone_.”

Makoto, recalling Haru’s prior complaints about lutefisk, is not so sure- Norway is not France. He turns to Haru to scope his response, and finds him watching him again, the attentive weight of his gaze like a balm. 

“It’s good to see you,” Haru says, abruptly, and then pulls ahead of the pack before Makoto can so much as blink in surprise, Rin’s startled expression morphing into a teasing grin as he does so. 

“Hey, what’s the rush, Haru?”

“It’s good to see you too,” Makoto says, affectionately, relieved when he manages to keep the weight of it out of his voice. It’s said to both of them; they shoot him looks in unison. 

“God, what’s with all the emotions?” Rin demands, mock-embarrassed as he grins and spins the suitcase after him. “It’s only been two months since the Japan races.”

“Not all of us are used to your  _globe-trotting lifestyle_ ,” Haru retorts, though the way he pronounces the last part in English undoubtedly refers to some kind of inside joke, judging by the way Rin’s embarrassment turns more genuine, endearingly sheepish even as he huffs out a breath.

“Time and place,  _babe_.”

That last one Makoto understands well enough; he stifles a surprised noise as his lips twitch upwards, charmed by the relative non-reaction on Haru’s part as much as the use of the term itself. 

“Ah, here’s one for us,” Rin declares, determined look in his eyes as he bee-lines for an open car. “ _Hi! Sir! Taxi for three! Downtown_!”

Side by side they bundle into the taxi, Rin taking the passenger’s seat with the apparent intent of helping with directions despite the fact he will inevitably spent half the ride twisted backwards to talk to them. Outside the windows lies Oslo; inside the taxi the driver exchanges rapid English with Rin as Haru squints in concentration, and Makoto closes his eyes for a moment, less overwhelmed by the alienness of it all than by the abrupt return to normalcy. 

Normalcy is a strange way of putting it. This, for them, isn’t normal, Makoto knows- it’s rare, in fact, that they are all three united like this. In some macabre sense it’s always felt predestined, even back in middle school, with Rin such a vivid transitory presence in their midst; when he looks back on the time they’ve had together, he’s always startled by how little of it they actually spent in each other’s presence. His solitary time with Haru had been  _normal_ , he supposes- the banal joys of repetition, years spent living in each other’s pockets- but not quite complete, either. So it’s not that it’s normal, this sense of home, but it feels like it. 

“You’re quiet,” Haru observes, as Rin and the driver begin to debate something or other in the front seat. Makoto nods, slides him a slightly caught-out smile.

“I just can’t believe I’m really here.”

At this Haru nods, gaze shifting to the window and back. “I felt like that in Australia.”

And Makoto thinks, for a moment, that the comparison is flawed, because what he means is homecoming, and a rightness that stings a little because it is aspirational rather than permanent, and that it isn’t Oslo that matters so much as this taxi cab. Then he thinks of Australia, and when it happened, and Haru getting on that plane- thinks of the way he tends to recap the whole escapade, driving Rin to frustration (‘Rin and I went swimming’)- and thinks maybe Haru knows exactly what he means after all. 

From a certain perspective, Makoto knows, these two people are the great tragic loves of his life. Some days it even feels like it. Most days, though, there is no tragedy to his life- nothing tragic about having friends he dearly loves, nothing tragic about being dearly loved by them in return. In the end, Rin and Haru are the kind of people you can’t help but be a little in love with- and that’s not so bad. 

“Hey,” Rin asks, fingers skimming Haru’s knee absently as he leans their way. “We good to go?”

“Yeah,” Makoto says. “Ready when you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> “Here when I say ‘I never want to be without you’, somewhere else I am saying ‘I never want to be without you again.’ And when I touch you in each of the places we meet, in all of the lives we are, it’s with hands that are dying and resurrected. When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life, in each place and forever.” (Bob Hicok) 
> 
> I would like to note that I am actually quite partial to a lot of Makoto ships (Sousuke and Gou in particular), but I didn’t want the focus of the story to be pulled away by a secondary pairing, and also I find it easy to imagine at least some of the characters dating outside of the cast. 
> 
> This was a joy to write (and, disturbingly, made me miss 2014); hope it reads the same.


End file.
